Finding Liberation Through Failure

This brings us to the promise I made yesterday to talk about liberation through failure as it relates to our dreams in 3 areas:

1.  Failing big time and in front of people whose opinion you care about.

2.  The dissolution of your long held, congruent, recognizable identity.

3.  The gifts of disappointment inherent in dreams achieved.

Let’s start with failing and failing in front of people whose opinion you care about.

FAILURE is anathema to EGO. 

FAILURE = COLD and ALONE and DYING in DARKNESS to the Ego.

Failing is how we vaccinate and eventually become immune to the Ego’s virus of “safety at all costs.”

Failing gives you a little bump and an itch.  Not rubella. 

Failing is essential to the Soul’s health.

Failing shows us our capacity. 

Failing shows us we did not die.  We are not immediately cast out.  We are not cold, alone and dying. 

Failing shows us our resilience.  Failing shows us what humiliation actually feels like and tastes like and how long it lasts in the system rather than the fear or risk of humiliation.  That one can last and linger a lifetime.

Failing shines the flashlight under the bed and exposes that there are no monsters.  Just dust.  And that sock you’ve been missing.

Failing is magic.  Failing is antidote.  Failing is finding that even the concrete has a little bounce. 

And remember, we started out as babies, hyper attuned to survival at the physical and emotional level. 

Failing, and failing in front of people whose opinion we care about, takes us right into the depth of our fears of being left and cast out dying alone.

“If my people see me fail, they’ll leave me.”

This is an incredibly powerful gravity to overcome when launching out into Soul.

And you might lose people as you try and attempt and fail.  I have.  And I imagine I’ll lose more.

And I’ve learned that even though I’ve had to grieve losses, I have not died.  I am not cold.  I am not alone.

Quite the opposite.  I feel a quality and texture to life that I’ve been longing for.  And have known is possible and that very life has been waiting for me to leap, to catch me, caress me, kiss me, hold me upside down by the ankles and shake a lot of the old stories out of my pockets so I can live in a life freer from fear and more aligned with love. 

Okay, next stop on our little tour into Liberation Through Failure.

The dissolution of your long held, congruent, recognizable identity.

At your core is not a some fixed, static, unchanging self with a name and likes and dislikes.  At your core is LOVE.  Pure pure pure LOVE.  Wild, creative, expressive, LOVE. 

In order to make sense of being alive, being in a body, being in a culture, being a body, being a soul and spirit on earth, we benefit from having some degree of an identity.

I am Peter McLean, 39 years old, living in Sandpoint ID married to Kelly, father to Maryah, Arthur and Fianna. 

This is all helpful for navigating through contemporary culture.  But it doesn’t encapsulate who I am. 

I’ve been a Christian, a lacrosse player, a farmer, a birder, a fiancé, a carpenter, a consultant, a coach, a wilderness guide, a fiancé again, a fiancé a third time, a husband, a stepfather, a father, a friend, a community member, and more. 

And all of these do not encapsulate who I am.  They are all tags and labels and when I cling tightly to them I can only grow to the size of those tanks. 

There have been three big identities in my life that I clung to even as they were sloughing off.  And the clinging brought me great suffering. 

·       Able Bodied Farmer

·       Fiancé (the second time)

·       Western Massachusetts Community Member

I went through some of the worst terror in my life when my back was going out.  Not because of the pain (which was bad and at times excruciating).  But because I believed that there would be no place for me in the hearts of my community if I wasn’t able bodied.  The terror was in believing my value was predicated on all my discs being un-herniated and in proper working order.  And faced with the reality of my body changing and my abilities changing I was certain that I was beginning a freefall into abandonment, loneliness, despair, depression and ultimately annihilation.

My back breaking gave me a huge gift.  It brought into light the beliefs I was unconsciously clinging to.  And as the terror subsided, I found that my place in the hearts of my community was not built on how many watermelons I could heave in a day, or potatoes bagged and palletized and lowered down into the root cellar. 

My community was in love with something more core and unshakable than that.  And no amount of disc herniations could touch that. 

Next, was my second engagement ending.  So painful.  For lots of reasons.  But the one I needed to really marinate in was the embarrassment I felt.  The shame I felt.  I believed that my engagement ending was some kind of public indication of the worst suspicions I held of myself, that I am not enough.  That I am not worthy of good and lasting love.  That I am damaged goods and now no one will ever want to love me, commit to me, trust me to build a life with.  There was the real and true grief and pain of a love changing forms and then there was all this secondary fear and shame based not on what I was feeling, but on a story I was believing about my worth and my worth in the eyes of my community. 

Again, the dawn broke, as it does, and I found that all was not as I suspected.  The world hadn’t turned its back on the damaged goods of me.  Not even close.    And I learned how to walk proud again. 

Lastly, leaving Western Massachusetts was so hard for me.  I couldn’t fathom a life outside of the people and place I had been living with and among.  I couldn’t conceptualize who I would be or become in a new place.  I couldn’t see it.  Opaque.  Dark.  Unclear. 

And it took me months to find the courage to say YES to the love of my life in Kelly and to say YES to allowing my beliefs around community, friendship, connection to expand and to grow into something that can span mountain ranges, great lakes, and grand canyons. 

Losing firmly gripped identities has allowed for the true essence of me, wild and creative love, to have less costumery to work through, fight through, sing through.

My prayer for you is that you leave the tank you’re in.  That you build the rope ladder and throw it up over the side and have a meal and a fire and goodbye party before you climb it.  Because, your Soul will organize a way for you to get out of that tank and it might involve glass breaking, flooding, and pain. 

And you’ll survive that.  Don’t worry.  And all that’s fine too.  Scars are sexy. 

But.  And.  You can also leave the tank you’re in with as much grace as is possible for you.  Which might be woefully clumsy. 

And that too, a clumsy departure, is gift you are giving your world, your family, your community.

You’re showing that a clumsy goodbye is more important than an ill-fitting life where no one gets their toes stepped on. 

Lastly:

The gifts of disappointment inherent in dreams achieved.

The attainment is rarely the reward.  The process of leaving, questing, risking out into your life, into the mystery and encountering yourself and the world, that is the great boon.  Making the movie.  Finishing the book.  Landing the role.  These things are the target.  You are the arrow.  And the flight is the party.  The wind moving through your fletching.  The soft rifling of your body as you travel through time and space.  This is the reward.  The party stops upon arrival.  Upon impact.  Upon completion.  And then.  There you are.  Again. 

Our dreams serve many functions:

They give us a target worthy of our capacities.

They teach us who we are, and we are not, on the way to the target.

They help harness our efforts into beautiful creation.

They leave us unsatisfied so that we continue to grow.

Our dreams invite us into a process.  They invite us into an initiation.  And on the other side of initiation is not the contentment of attainment.  It is responsibility.  Greater and greater responsibility. 

Our dreams initiate us. 

All the creation through following our dreams is but a byproduct.  It is not the product. 

Our sensitivity to, and faith in, the next initiation is the product. 

To be sensitive to, is to be responsible to. 

As we initiate, we become more sensitive.  As we become more sensitive, we become more responsible. 

And the specificity of what and who you are responsible to is unique to you.  Each and every one of you.

That’s the goal here.  For you to find what you are deeply sensitive to and there for responsible for. 

That is your calling. 

And it won’t let you sleep.

Until you begin to relate to it.

We are relational beings. 

And your dreams are a rowdy, lively, lovely crew.

Ready and eager to join you. 

Are you ready and eager to join them?

Half the Beauty of the Gift

My friend Lois likes to say, “half the beauty of the gift is in the manner in which it is received.”

We came into this world loaded with gifts.

We are learning how to say Thank You for these gifts.

We are learning how to live Thank You for these gifts.

We are learning how to honor and dignify and grow these gifts through the manner in which they are received.

There can be a curious taboo around receiving gifts.

We want to push them away.  Subtly or clearly.

We want to give the gift, the compliment, the help, but receiving it is somehow more challenging.

We are given gifts and what gets in the way of receiving beautifully?

Half the beauty of the gift is in the manner in which it is received. 

What stops up, slows us, shy’s us when it comes to receiving, accepting, acknowledging our innate gifts?

I think there is a perception of audacity that borders on arrogance that we are very afraid to be perceived as.

If I don’t balk at the compliment.  If I don’t quickly deflect.  If I don’t speak to all the reasons it's not how it appears, then people might think me arrogant, narcissistic, inflated.

And those traits are not traits that engender love and connection and support.

So.  We distance ourselves from that.  

Through a variety of means.

Rejecting, discounting, undermining our gifts, our gold, our MAJESTY are all ways we’ve found to keep us safe from the risk of being perceived as arrogant, inflated, narcissistic.  

I grew up Christian.  And whether you grew up Christian or not you grew up in a Christian nation.  You grew up with the mega story of Christ, original sin, salvation through death, morality, rule and law, and much more baked into the fabric of this land that was stolen and colonized.  

Christ, a man of love, a man loaded with gifts, a man who eventually posed a great threat to the status quo did not reject his gifts.  He embraced them.  And invited others to do the same.  

It is not lost on me that the world’s most well known state-sanctioned murder involved a man unwilling to diminish his light in the face of true existential threat.

Whether you grew up believing any of the story of Christ or not, this story permeates the cultural fabric of this nation.  

Knowingly or unknowingly, I think, we are reluctant to shine as bright as we can because murder will be the result.

I think, when we deflect a compliment, we are unconsciously safeguarding ourselves from murder.

Christ, and many others in history, refused to shrink his shine. 

I think there is something at the deep survival level that prevents us from truly accepting our radiance.

And I love the Christ story because death did not prevail.

And that’s why I love nature, creation, the wild.

Death does not prevail.

Death is essential.

Death is a phase.

A phase you enter.

A phase you leave.

Christ is one example for humanity.

And nature is a living, dying, cycling example of the impermanence of life attached to static form.

And yes.  I do think we are signing up for death when we step into our gifts.

For most of us it won’t be state sanctioned murder.

But death will visit us as we embrace our gifts.

We will grow.

And to grow is to die.

And to die is to be folded into a tapestry of mystery teeming with life.

Jung says, darkness and upheaval alway precede an expansion of consciousness.

Said another, death always precedes more life.  

Some of us spend our whole lives avoiding death.

Some of us learned that death is not to be avoided but to be entered as its grip on us is not eternal.  And its grip on us is actually the hands of God shaping us into our next state of beauty.

I can avoid lots of deaths.

I cannot avoid the death of my body.

I want to dance with death throughout my life.

To continue to become.

To continue down the river along the way to the ocean.

I want to dance with death knowing that death is but a station, not a destination.

And oddly, I think, accepting our gifts is signing up for death.

And naturally there is reluctance.

The Autumn is ending.

Winter is coming.

Death is dawning.

And the Winter is where the magic happens.  

The Winter is chrysalis time.

The Winter is the time when the soul inspirits the baby just beginning its journey in its mother.

The Winter is the time when soul of the earth dreams its way into being.  Through us.  

We are earth.

How much water makes up our bodies?

How much water makes up this earth?

What is at the center of our life force hot and red with blood?

And what is at the center of this earth?

We are earth animated.

And we are wild beings of will and creativity, love and beauty.

The Winter is where the deep dream descends and the cave walls flicker from the ancient fire and the old songs still echo off the cathedral of granite and quartz overhead.

And it's Death that supports this dreaming.

And it's saying YES to change and transformation that renders the sting of death harmless.

When we say Yes to our gifts we say yes to our Death.  When we say YES to your Death.  We are saying YES to a new and more aligned life.

Nature does not resist change.

Nature does not resist its resplendence.  

Nature is audacious.

Nature is eternal.

Did you know that all the water that has ever been on the earth is still on the earth and it will never be destroyed?

Nature is eternal.

And when we talk about “our nature” or “one’s nature” we are talking about the innate essence of the person.  Who they are at their core.  Their nature.

Nature is unselfconscious expression.

This is our goal.

Unselfconcioius expression.  

And Death is our refinement along the way.

Death is where the Grip of Safety, Grip of Security, Grip of Surety has its fingers slowly pulled back to allow for the next form, the next posture, the phase to emerge.

In this way, we never die.  In this way, we are always dying.

Our gifts invite death.  

And our soul writes each invitation, requests an RSVP, and licks each envelope.

Our soul is constantly bringing us into contact with opportunities to align ourselves with our Nature.

And the many forms of death is the gift that soul gives us and waits to see the manner in which it is received.

Beautifully.

Or

Resistantly.

And the Soul is relentless.  

And it will get your attention.

As it already has many times in your life and as it will many times to come.

The question is can we become just a little more sensitive to the Soul’s tug at the sleeve?

Can we become a little more courageous to move towards the thing we can’t seem to shake wanting?

Can we let go of what seems to be sloughing off of us to be able to receive that which is on its way to us?

Can we embody the resplendent nature of our gifts?

Can we step into our gifts?

Can we receive the reflections of others to help us see our gifts more clearly?

Can we believe we are as beautiful as we’re being told?

This week, we try.

We try.

We try.

Beauty In // Beauty Out

Give yourself 2 hours.  Take a walk out into the wild landscape. 

Make an altar. 

Can be as simple as two stones stacked on top of each other.  As simple as a ring of pinecones.  As simple as a feather stuck into the soft ground.  As simple as four acorns pointing out into four directions.  Simple.  Beautiful.  Magical.  Make an altar.

Gather the abundance.

Once you’ve made your altar, start gathering material.  Whatever the landscape you’re on is abundant with, collect that.  Maybe you’re on a Maine rocky beach.  An Idaho conifer forest.  A maple grove in Michigan.  A beach and oak forest in Massachusetts.  Wherever you are, see what is in abundance.  And gather up at least 30 or so pieces of that abundance.

Make your offerings.

Approach your altar.  This altar is you.  Your life.   Your qualities.  Your presence.  Essence.  Spirit.  Soul. This altar is you.  Take one piece of the abundance in your hands and lay it on or around your altar and speak.  Out loud.  One thing you love about who you are.  Be as specific as possible.  And speak to yourself like you would a lover.  Bring your poet out.  Bring your lover out.  Bring your sovereign out.  The one who knows how to bless.  Bring them out.  And bless, in specific, as many aspects of yourself as you have collected from the abundance of the land.

Breath and feel.

Your altar now, in its new found adornment, is just a little closer to fairly representing you.  Just a little bit closer.  Breath in all that you just said as you placed the leaves, the pinecones, the stones, the cedar boughs, the birch bark, the beauty of the land.  Breath all that in.  Breath all that in.  And when you breathe out, feel, see, and know all of that beauty expanding out and nurturing the landscape.  Breath in the beauty.  Breath out the beauty.  And as you breathe it out, see, feel and know the trees basking in your exhalation.  The beach rocks blushing from your presence.  The overhead clouds billowing just a little fuller.  The birdsong carrying just a little further.  The earth receiving a little more deeply.  Breathe in your beauty.  Exhale your beauty.  And see and feel and know that the wild world around you sees you just as beautiful, if not more.  And when you’re ready, walk back to your home or your bike or your vehicle or your canoe or your kicked-off shoes and carry this fullness of beauty in and out with you into the rest of your day, your week.

Between Two Altars

There will come a time when resisting your life, your soul, and the one you know is possible for you becomes more painful, more intolerable, more devastating than whatever fears you might have of beginning to align your life more towards the one you want and the one that is waiting for you.

There will come a time when a threshold will emerge.  Demarcating the life you’ve been living and the life you’re here to life.

Behind that threshold, all you’ve ever known. All you’ve ever loved.  All who’ve ever loved you.  Every accolade.  Every raise and promotion.   Every ribbon, trophy, grade, degree, doctorate, discernable achievement.  All leading up to that emerging threshold. 

Behind that threshold, every love you’ve ever experienced.  Every way of being that you’ve learned to keep people close.  Every posture or contortion or mask or persona you’ve ever donned to stay safe, alive, in love, protected, secure, relevant, regarded, and reassured.

Behind that threshold, every inheritance.   The inheritance of world view, religion, culture, orientation to others around you, political affiliation, affiliations of all kinds.  All behind that threshold.

Beyond the threshold, darkness.  Darkness and upheaval. 

It is inevitable. 

Beyond that threshold, the inky in-between of life moving in and out of discernable organization.

Beyond that threshold, shadows and fog and a loneliness unparalleled.

Beyond that threshold, dizzying disorientation to very many things of the human realm: relationship, ambition, self concept.

Beyond that threshold, mystery. 

Beyond that threshold, the liminal space of initiation, becoming and transformation.

Beyond that threshold, your life.

Your true life.  With your true desires.  With your true clarity.  Clarity that might cost you.  Cost you a discernible career.  Cost you a secure but unsatisfying relationship.  Cost you standing, status, recognizability among the eyes of the day. 

Your life, the one coming for you and you for it, will cost you. 

Dearly.

And nearly,

Everything you have.

But.

As consolation for experiencing your life dissolving around you, you will emerge as yourself evermore again.

But as a self much bigger.  Much freer.  Much more alive and aligned and animated by something wild and free, powerful and unmistakably trustworthy. 

Your Soul.

And enjoy.  And also, be prepared. Because it will happen again. Your next wave of becoming.  And when it does, remember you’ve done this before. 

You’ve shed skins before.  You’ve encased in chrysalis before.  You’ve gone into the fever dream before. 

Remember, that every summer has a winter.  Every spring has an autumn.  The seed cannot come without the fruit’s flesh falling away. 

We are cyclical.

Just like nature.

Just like a wheel.

Just like a life lived in harmony with its own true path.

Between Two Altars

One altar, the life you’ve been living.

The second, the life that is coming for you and you to it.

Take yourself somewhere beautiful, out in nature, and build an altar for the beautiful life you’ve been living, the one that got you here, this far, with so much beauty intact. 

Build this altar to the life that has carried you over the ocean of experience from your birth to now. 

Build it and speak to it and honor it and say thanks and say thanks and say thanks.

Some ways away from this altar, build your second altar, the altar of the life coming for you and you for it.

Build it and speak to it.  Build it and speak to the trees towering overhead.  Build it and speak to the earth underneath.  Build it and speak to the waters nearby.  Build it and speak to the day-blind stars.  Build it and speak to what you know of this new life.

Build it and feel the delight.  Feel the reunion.  Feel the alignment already cohering.

Once the two altars are built, stand and play in the space between them.  Feel the pull and call of the familiar old life.  Feel and smell, the scent on the wind of the new and approaching life.  Feel the gravity of each.  Feel the fears associated with each.  Feel the tension. 

And practice being with yourself.  As the gravities of each pole pull you and stretch you.  Feel your grace.  Feel your power.  Feel your courage and bravery.  Feel your compassion and patience.  Feel your understanding.  Feel your conviction.  Feel your gratitude. Feel the queer nature of the inky in-between and how the maps are upside and compass needles spinning.  Feel the curious ground of the liminal in-between.  And feel the earth under your feet.  The wind in your hair.  The birdsong in your ear.  The breath in your lungs.  The starlight falling on your shoulders.  The moon wheeling around you.  The daylength shortening.  The temperatures cooling.  And somehow.  Somehow.  Somehow, feel the promise of Spring.  Even in this moment of seasonal descent.  Feel the Spring.  Feel the promise.  And as you feel all this earth and wonder and beauty, feel yourself.  Standing, walking, waltzing, kneeling, keening, crawling, bawling, braving.  Feel yourself.  And your companionship.  Your unbreakable companionship.  And your loyalty. Your friendship. Feel the pal of you, warm and loving and alive and always with you.  Feel all this.  As you find yourself between two altars.

Feel yourself between two alters.

Love yourself between two alters.

Honor yourself between two altars.

I Walk Into Darkness

I Walk Into Darkness

Choose a morning this week when you will wake 2 hours before the sunrise.  When it's still black.  When the stars have shifted completely around Polaris from where you left them when you went to bed.

Choose the morning.  

Next, choose the land on which you will take yourself out for a walk.  Somewhere big enough and wild enough to hold you.  And somewhere where you won’t get lost.  Make sure there is a trail to follow, a treeline to hug, a shoreline to reference.  Do not put yourself at risk of getting lost.  Put yourself in a wild landscape, that you’ll be able to navigate.

And.  With headlamp off.  Flashlight doused.  Candle blown.

Walk into the darkness.

Walk into the darkness.

Walk into the darkness.

And remind yourself of what you are doing:

“I walk into darkness.”

“I walk into darkness.”

“I walk into darkness.”

Feel all the accompanying feelings as you do so.

And let the forest, or lakeshore, or wetland, or meadow, or beach, or mountain, or desert, or riverbed, or salt flat, or wherever you’ve chosen (and has chosen you), reveal to you its wisdom and knowledge about you and walking into darkness.

It’s simple.

• Pick a morning to wake 2 hours before the sunrise

• Pick a place in wild nature to take yourself one early morning.

• Walk.  Without aid of lamp or light.

• Remind yourself of what you do:

• “I walk into darkness.”

• And experience what is revealed to you.

• At home, or at the end of your walk, write for 15 minutes.  Freely.  Just keep the pen moving.  Let your thoughts find a good home in your journal.

The Discontent

Your experience might be supported by listening first to the recording of Stalking The Gold.

Where in my life am I experiencing discontentment?  And of the areas, which one plagues me the most?

3 minutes

Who do I find myself becoming when I am in this discontent?

3 minutes

And who do I long to be in this particular area of my life?  What are their qualities, their energies, their capacities, outlooks, worldviews, behaviors, and beliefs?

3 minutes

And how am I already this person?  Where do I see the seeds of who I know I can be already sprouting in other parts of my life?

3 minutes

And what does that person embody?  What does that person enjoy?  What does that person bring into his/her life that creates a hum of delight?

3 minutes

And what conditions seem to really support that person in thriving?

3 minutes

And what is 1 thing I can do today to create that conducive condition for myself to continue to thrive?

1 minute

And what is one thing I can do tomorrow morning?

1 minute

And one thing I can do tomorrow afternoon?      

1 minute

 And one thing I can do tomorrow evening?

1 minute

The Flower

Listen first to the recording of The Meadow, The Stem, The Flower, and The Hawk.  Then answer the following questions:

Describe in detail The Stem that is you.  What you love about being stemmy.  And.  The parts of being stemmy that are growing old, weary, exhausting.  Describe The Stem.  And do not shortchange all the beauty, satisfaction, comfort, safety, understanding that comes with being stemmy.  Be sure to speak to all aspects of being who you are now.  

Said another way, describe what it's like to be you now.  The you that you are now.  Not the one you aspire to be.  But the one who is in the meadow now.  And describe as much as you can about what it's like to be you right now.

7 minutes

The Stem stays only green and stemmy for so long until the top of the stem starts to bulge and swell and grow with an unknown promise.  What do you know is inside that bulging and swelling for you?  Write with as much detail, specificity and audacity as you can.

7 minutes

And The Stem cannot fight the swelling pregnancy of the blossom.  And.  The Stem has forgotten where it came from.  Forgotten having come from a seed, it was once inside a flower, and having been inside a flower means it WAS once a flower.  

Where are you in resistance to your flowering?  Where have you forgotten that you are a being of metamorphosis and that you LOVE the exhilaration of state-change, of becoming, of transformation?  Where have you forgotten that you are perfectly suited to change and transform with mystery as guide?

7 minutes

Your resistance was futile.  The water broke, the baby was born, the flower petals unfurled.  The most tender, sensitive, unprotected bits of you that have ever been, on grand display.  Describe what it's like to be so exposed, so attractive, so vulnerable.  And describe all the things you want coming to you, finding you, smelling you, making honey from your pollen, birds weaving you into their nests, grandmas collecting you for dyes, boys choosing you to woo their first loves, shamans tincturing you for medicine.  

Describe what it's like for you to be so exposed.  To be so soft and vulnerable and in complete surrender.  In your life today.  

And describe all the beauties, wonders, magic that is finding you as you take on this new form of soft and open.  Describe this for your life now.  What are all the great gifts and blessings you are calling into your life?  Be as specific and audacious as possible.

7 minutes

Solstice Celebration

Here we are.  Right on the cusp of equilibrium.  Light.  Dark.  But only for a moment.  Then it’s a slide into darkness.  The Fall Cycle ends around the time of the Winter Solstice.  What do you want to be celebrating on the Solstice?  What do you want to be feeling as you move into the Winter months?  This is a moment to dream into the future and imagine into what you want for yourself, know for yourself, are calling in for yourself.  The next 13 weeks will be in service to this vision.  So, dream.  Dream into it.  What clarity?  What peace?  What burden laid down?  What excitement?  What will you be celebrating on Solstice?  

Now the fun part.  As you dream into it.  Write it as if you were writing it on December 21st.  As if it's already happened for you.  As if the dream came true.  Write it in the first person present.

Example: There has been a profound shift in how I orient to how I invite people/energy into my life/my projects/my family.  I am now so much more aware that when I am inviting, I am creating an opportunity for someone to inhabit their gift and for that gift to synergize with a gift of mine.  I used to invite people from a place of hesitancy, guilt, shame, unworthiness, lack of confidence, or as a show of my insufficiency.  I am beyond grateful to feel how that is shifted in me.  And how embodied the new understanding is.  That when I invite people into something I care deeply about, I am knocking on the door of their gifts and saying Do You Wanna Play With Me?  And there is nothing shameful or insufficient or to feel guilty about in that.  

Write for 10 minutes.  Just keep your fingers/pen moving.  See what comes.  Surprise yourself. 

Now.  Using joy, sadness, fear, shame and anger, what are the predominant emotions you are feeling now?  And where in your body are they present?

Write for 3 minutes.

What gifts that you already possess will be essential for your Solstice Celebration to come true?  

Write for 7 minutes.

And what gifts, laying latent inside of you are aching to come up to support you in the dreams you celebrated on this coming Solstice?

Write for 7 minutes:

Stalking The Gold

We long for oneness. 

We remember it in various degrees of vibrancy.

We were born from it. 

And our babies and small children are still covered in the stuff of oneness. 

Over time, throughout our lives, the prevailing wind of separation began to blow in. 

Our parents did not always know what to do with us and began to manage us more for compliance than for authentic self-expression.

Bless their hearts.   They did the best they could.  

And I’m doing the same with Maryah, Arthur and Fianna consciously and unconsciously.

The winds of separation have blown in.  We remember some distant haze of oneness.  But it's tangibility seems to pass by in inconsistent, irregular flashes. 

And the taste of the fare of the day is no longer as appetizing. 

We’ve honored the deal of the day.  We went to school.  We got jobs.  We’ve found some friends and maybe even made some family.

And yet.

The promise doesn’t seem to be kept.

I’ve followed the rules.

I’ve done what was asked, what was expected, and even beyond.

And yet.

I still feel a dissonance.  A distance.  An estrangement.  Almost a betrayal to my true self.

And I’m not even sure what that true self looks like, feels like, talks like, acts like.

But I know, the path that I’ve been walking has only ever been satisfying despite the path.  It's only ever been satisfying for the moments experienced of deep and true oneness. 

So.  What do I do?

Where do I go?

I know the well paved path of the day is not leading me where I want to go.

But how to wriggle out of the masses moving with grand momentum evermore down a road I no longer trust the promise of?

How do I get out of the throng?

And this isn’t just at the impersonal, society level.

This is in my own house!

How do I claim something new now?!

When I’ve already set sail inside of a family unit?

They love me for who I’ve been.

They don’t know me for who I actually am.

And I am scared shitless that when the more of me is revealed, they won’t like it. 

And worse, and scarier to admit, I might not like them.

And this is where it stops.

Or, instead of the threat to family that my true authenticity might pose, it’s my career.

Or said another way, it's my value.  Or said another way, it's my contribution to society.  Or said another way, it's my safety and security.  Or said another way, it’s my family’s safety and security. 

And this is where it stops.

I’d rather cling to what I have, what I know, in its imperfection.  In it’s pretty-goodness.  Rather than risk moving out into the unknown to discover, recover, remember my true nature.   One bit at a time.

I’d rather keep bailing out the hull with furniture precariously balanced on cinder blocks and 2 by 4’s and whatever I have on hand to keep it up and out of the daily encroaching waters than find and patch the hole or, wilder yet, dream into the boat that doesn’t require daily bailing to stay seaworthy.

This week, and for the rest of our lives, we’ll begin exploring where we’ve felt that oneness, where we’ve felt a touch of that true self coming through, where we’ve been able to be exactly as we are and how good good good it felt.

Today, we bless every decision we’ve ever made, every relationship we’ve ever started or ended, every job we’ve ever worked or quit, and begin to ask ourselves does this make my heart sing? 

Does this make my heart sing?

Does this make my heart sing?

Does this make my heart sing?

To embark on this journey does not mean we must wholesale dump our lives and all the responsibilities and relationships and covenants we have and have made.

This means, we begin to take a sobering look at which shoes we’ve been running around in that do not really feel all that comfortable anymore.

Just noticing and assessing “right-fit” is a major first step.

Do you want to know where your gifts are?

Do you want to know where your great and shining life is? 

Do you?

Go where there is discontentment.

Go where there is the feeling of impossibility.

Go where there is the feeling of despairing resignation into something that will never be.

Go where you are exhausted.

Go where you are simply going through the motions.

These areas are where the angels of your gifts are eager eager eager to bring you into wild fulfillment.

So let them.

And remember last week’s ritual: I walk into darkness.  I walk into darkness.  I walk into darkness.

And this week’s portals will take you into a few ways of connecting in with your life and what it's showing you about where your gifts lay in wait.

The Meadow, The Stem, The Flower, The Hawk

The Meadow, The Stem, The Flower, The Hawk

Close your eyes. 

Find your breath.

Find your lungs. 

Those humble whales inside your chest.

Feel their rhythm.

Feel their rise.

Their fall.

Their eternal nature.

Feel.

Feel.

Feel.

And imagine a scene, a scene of life not yet organized.  Imagine all the raw materials for all the natural wonder in all the cosmos.  Imagine it all swirling about in a slow and gentle chaos.

See nebulas and sideways walking crabs.  See granite and green and grebe feathers.  See aquifers upset and firmaments unfurled.  See sun-stars and sea-stars and all the ancient ones from nears and fars.

Not quite day. Not quite night.  Not quite land. Not quite sea.  Some kind of inky in-between. 

Keep breathing.

Keep breathing.

Keep breathing.

And watch as coherence begins to form in front of you.  See out of the inky in-between a horizon.  Your first.  The first.

See earth emerging up from below and forming land, Terra Firma. 

See the gentle chaos of the cosmos recede into a summer’s sunny day.

See and feel and become the weather.  The waters.   Suspended, hovering and assembled in the heavens to move and rove and rain and grow the green earth underneath. 

See and feel and become the soft ground made softer by the falling rain. 

See and feel and become the seeds shaking and quaking and starting as babies once again.

See and feel and become the sun’s rays invigorating the damp earth, and shaking, and quaking those seed-babies. 

See and feel and become the landscape, a meadow.  A meadow.  A meadow.  Trees lining the edges.  Grasses filling the expanse. 

See and feel and become all of it.  The sun.  The rain.  The earth.  The seed.  The growth.  The invigoration.  The life-forces moving and humming through it all. 

See and feel and become.  All of it.

Keep breathing

Keep breathing

Keep breathing

And see and feel and become one single green stem in the ocean of green and growing of this great and grand meadow.

See and feel and become this one green stem.  Feel the earth around your roots.  The sun pulling you impossibly out of yourself.  The wild expansion unbridled and at the mercy of.

See and feel and become this one green growing stem.

Feel the wind move you.

Feel the delight you take in it.

Feel the brush of the meadow mouse’s coat as he scurries by.

And feel the delight in it.

Feel the stars overhead showering you with impossible falling light.

Feel the ancient mountains crumbled that somehow feed you from down below.

Feel the waters finding your roots from the impossible depths of ancient aquifers.

Feel the moon wheeling around the sky. 

Feel the sun continuing to pull you inside out, up and up and up into more of yourself.

Feel the more of yourself.

The total lack of control that you have.

And delight in it.

Feel the sun and rain and earth meeting in multidirectional miracle culminating in you.

And delight in it. 

And now feel something, something almost new.

Something that feels like a whisper of a memory.

Feel a shift in your growth.

Feel a shift in the upward, inside out expansion.

Feel a change.

Feel the top of you beginning to swell.

Beginning to grow bulbous.

Beginning to mount.

Beginning to tighten.

Beginning to push.

To swell.

To bulge.

To press against yourself

To press against Your understanding

Your remembering

Your comfort

Your sense of ease

Your knowing

And feel

And feel

And feel

The bud begin to break

The stem of you transforming

Without consent

Without a manual

Without consideration

And feel the feelings of being yet again out of control

But this time

You are breaking open

Wide and wider

Wide and wider

Impossibly wide

And no longer are you green and stemmy

But now you are also pink

A color only ever seen in the hours before the sun would rise

Now you are the color of heaven

And now you are no longer the strong green stem you once were

But now you are the softest most delicate thing you’ve ever felt.

And the very top of you, the highest, most exposed part of you

Is now the softest, most beautiful thing you’ve ever been.

And then it happens.

You hear the sound of wings

You feel the weight of a body

You feel the probing mouthparts of 

a moth.

Then another, this one a fly.

Another, a bee.

Another, a hummingbird.

Another, a butterfly.

Another, an ant.

Another, a yellowjacket.

All visiting you, basking in you, feeding on you, so enamored with you that they must gather parts of you and carry them away to make food from you to feed their young.

You look around.

All green around you.

All stems.

You go into relaxing into the infinite bliss of being so soft, so attractive, so vulnerable, so out of control, so at the mercy of some great unfolding

Then.  A wave of fear and panic and desperation to control.

To try and pack the petals back in to be green again.

Be stemmy again.

Be like everything else again.

And luckily, a butterfly

Lands gently, unrolls its tongue and tickles you so sweetly.

So sweetly that you are back.

Back in delight.

Back in sensation.

Back in experience.

Back into the infinite expanse of now.  

When all of the sudden you hear a sound you’d never heard before.

The wind.

But this time the wind being riven in two.

The foiling of the wind by something great and powerful.

Above you, and to the north, the branch still gently bouncing in the red maple.

A sharp-shinned hawk.

Your breath

Gone.

Your heart 

Racing.

Your mind

Searching

To understand.

And out of the long held patterns of your mind arises

the first logical conclusion.

This hawk is here because I’ve done something wrong.

The hawk is here to punish me.

This hawk is here because I was enjoying my softness too much.

This hawk is here to humble me.

This hawk is here to show me I am not the only thing in existence.

The hawk is here to shame me for enjoying being so beautiful, so fragrant, so attractive, so enjoyable.  

This hawk is here to instill in me the fear, proper and wise, to have in this life.

The hawk

Sits.

Yellow Talons bent around the branch

Striped tail showing black and white and gray

The hawk sits

The hawk watches

The hawk rests

The hawk watches

The hawk hawks

Majestically, unselfconsciously and without regard

And in time you realize there is more than just fear emerging, shame emerging, meaning-making emerging in you.

There is wonder.

There is awe.

There is great respect.

There is still fear.

But along with so much else.

There is gratitude.

There is reverence.

There is joy.

There is attraction.

There is a sense of family.  

There is a sense of oneness.

There is a moment of grief for welcoming the hawk into the meadow with so much fear and story, guilt and shame.

Those moments of not seeing the hawk, but seeing all the past layered over the hawk.  Missing those moments of unparalleled presence lost forever.  

And yet there is sweetness for yourself.

Your soft self.

Your self who doesn’t really remember that you’ve done this before

You’ve flowered before

You’ve made this mythical morphos over and over again actually

Since the inky in-between times of gentle chaos

And, when you’re still  and quiet enough, can remember the inky darkness just before the break of the seed and the first bit of green tenderness shot up into the sky

And that when you get even more still, and even more quiet, you can remember back to an earlier flowering

An earlier moment of budbreak.

An earlier moment, like a memory, of opening and expanding and becoming with exhilaration and delight

And back you go

And back you go

And back you go

Deeper and deeper and deeper

Into all your many flowerings

All your many Meadows

All your many Hawks

Until you hear the air foiling overhead

The maple branch bouncing

But this time

The black and white and gray

Is but a feather

Falling to the ground

and caressing you on its way to the earth

On its way back

On its way back in

On it way back into

All things

All things

All things

All the inky in-between things