Playing all our notes

Even before I received the news that Nine Gates Mystery School founder Gay Luce is in the process of dying, I’ve had Nine Gates on my mind. Thinking a lot about Gay, though, I’ve really been reflecting on her creation and the amazing ideas at the core of its structure. Although there are many layers to Nine Gates, the central theme is that we are like flutes with many notes possible but most of us only play one or two all the time. Each chakra has its own tone, its own characteristics, vibration, etc.

When you really learn to tune into each chakra and understand the uses and purposes of each, you can move at will from the energy of one to the energy of another, shifting energy to suit circumstances. As you proceed through the 2-part workshop, you spend 2 days on each of 9 energy centers. There’s a master teacher for each who teaches practices from his or her tradition or specialty that use that chakra and help you build energy there.

The teachers have changed many times over the 30+ years since I attended, but just as examples, for my sessions we had:

• David Patton, Celtic tradition with the Dromenon, or labyrinth, as the central focus for the bubbling spring chakra in the feet
• Gay Luce, who trained extensively with Tarthang Tulku and Claudio Naranjo, teaching practices about birth and beginnings for 1st chakra
• a teacher from Mantak Chia’s school teaching the Taoist practices of the Inner Smile and the Microcosmic Orbit for second chakra
• Ellen Margron, longtime facilitator of the Fisher Hoffman method teaching techniques of discovering locked in emotions and releasing them for third chakra
• Angeles Arrien teaching practices based on her Basque background for moving from third to fourth (heart) space
• Paul Ray, Sufi master, teaching chants and breathing practices to hold heart space
• Gay Luce teaching Right Speech and Right Listening for the fifth chakra
• Serge King teaching Huna practices for sixth chakra
• Gay Luce leading death and dying practices for seventh chakra
• Gay Luce teaching about connection to higher realms for the transpersonal chakra

There was always a large staff composed of Mystery School graduates. Behind the scenes, they helped elevate the energy of each chakra by resonating together before each class session (3x a day) into the energy of whichever chakra was being addressed and then dispersing around the room amongst the students and holding that energy space.

As a student, I was way too wowed by all of it to realize what the staff was doing aside from also mentoring all of us, being there to help if we struggled with a practice, etc. And it took a couple of times serving on staff for me to really comprehend how much it added to the power of living in each chakra to have the staff holding the energy space.

The sessions are designed with three classes a day, one filling the morning (and for those who want it there are exercises before breakfast), one the afternoon and one the evening. There are also some amazing rituals thrown in. It’s an immersion experience. For some people, the teachers are exciting, the multitudes of new practices they learn almost come too quickly to take everything in and they come away with more enthusiasm about all that than understanding about “playing the flute”.

Many of us also went on to study more with some of the teachers. I did a lot of emotional work with groups facilitated by Ellen Margron, read a lot of Serge King’s books and went to one of his workshops, attended various Sufi events, practiced Right Speech and eventually taught it, etc. Many people who were taken with some of the Buddhist practices Gay taught went on to join Spirit Rock. After Baba Harihar Ram began teaching a lot of people joined his Sonoma Ashram. You get the idea. So many ways to get a LOT out of Nine Gates.

Throughout all of it, though, there are lessons to be learned about moving among the chakras. At feet, for instance, so many useful things about grounding are part of it. If you’re in high anxiety, really worrying about something, all your energy has moved up to your head. If you put your attention into your feet and hold it, the energy will flow downward and it will help calm and ground you.

One of my fave stories was about a grad who was in NYC one day when a storm created winds so strong at rush hour that people were blown down if they tried to go outside, so thousands of people were caught in their buildings. She really wanted to get to the subway and on to an appointment. So she put her energy in her feet, imagined her feet having tentacles into the ground and walked across the plaza to the subway.

Many times when I’ve been on my way to an interview or a meeting about which I was nervous and for which I wanted to be in my power, I’ve quietly done the microcosmic orbit while riding along on the bus or up in the elevator, bringing energy into the power space of second chakra. A grad who worked as an exec for a big company would make sure he entered meeting rooms first and would move into heart energy, working to fill the room with it and hold that energy space during the meeting.

These are just some examples of the ways in which we can play much more complex music in our lives than the repetitive couple of notes we usually stay stuck in.

My spirituality centers around my belief that everything is energy, so learning how to work with energy for me is the goal. And hanging around with a teacher whose core teaching and way of living were so totally immersed in energy practice was such a gift!

Gay Luce, friend and mentor, on her way to the other side

I received word that my dear friend Gay Luce, whose health has been failing rapidly the last couple of years, is in transition, expected to die at any time. She’s been so important in my life, I can’t quite grasp the idea of a world without her in it.

As has been true of a number of big changes that turned out great, meeting Gay was a fluke. I’d been taking some classes with spiritual teachers Arthur and Ann Cataldo. They met and liked Gay so much they helped sponsor a workshop in Chicago. Since they lived in FL and I lived in suburban Evanston at the time, they asked me to help field phone calls about the workshop in exchange for a free ticket.

I was happy to help but the workshop was a long haul from where I lived and I wasn’t sure I’d go. Literally up until getting up that morning and driving, I was never sure I’d attend. I felt uncomfortable in the crowd of people I didn’t know and wondered if I could slip out at a break when Gay walked in the room and the light around her drew me in. She hadn’t talked much about Nine Gates Mystery School before I knew I had to sign up.

The tuition for Nine Gates, which is a residential program that takes place over 2 9-day sessions, is high and it took a lot of questioning and negotiating to finally wind up with a time-payment plan and to head off in the winter of 1990 to Westerbeke Ranch in Sonoma for the first session. See here for more info on the workshop.

Not only did the workshop completely blow me away–life changing, really–but I met fantastic people, many of whom lived out there. My life was in transition anyway and after the 1st session I started wondering about moving out there so I could immerse myself more deeply. With that in mind I drove out to Joshua Tree for session 2 and after went up to the Bay Area to look around. By the end of the trip I’d decided to move.

It took quite a while to sell my house, but in spring of 1991 I headed to San Francisco. A horrible roommate left me soon looking for new digs and it happened that Gay had just evicted the tenant in the apartment attached to her house. So, suddenly I was living at the home of my revered teacher. Initially I felt some trepidation, but it didn’t take long for Gay, her husband, David, and I to become a family. We wandered in and out of each others’ homes and our pets felt equally free to hang out anywhere.

They were already talking about selling the 2-acre place in Corte Madera; that didn’t happen until 27 years later, but every time they brought up the possibility, they also told me they were looking for something that would have space for me too and it’s hard to tell you how deeply that moved me. Eventually, due to the high cost of living and having a lot of senior relatives in Kentucky, I was the one who wound up moving away…

The property had been and continued to be the scene of many rituals and spiritual gatherings and it’s hard to describe the magical energy of this land in the hills near Mount Tamalpais. Amazing teachers came through all the time. Constant heady discussions of deep metaphysical topics and learning insights became my norm.

Perhaps the most life-impacting aspect of time with Gay was, for me, experiencing absolute love and acceptance for the first time ever. There was no potential career path or odd plan I could come up with that Gay didn’t meet with absolute enthusiasm and expressing her certainty that I would be good at it. Being more accustomed to being discouraged from following the paths that most interested me, it took a while to understand what a gift it was to be so totally supported.

For many years after I moved to Kentucky we talked often and I went out to house and cat sit while they went to sessions of Nine Gates many times but in recent years between more on my plate with “Mom care” and Gay’s increasing problems with aphasia along with their move away from the home I’d shared meant contact decreased.

This is not the first time I’ve felt terrible at the end that my contacts with someone had not been as frequent as I felt they should have been, but I’ve also realized life just works that way sometimes. In the meantime, I’m gratefully running thousands of images of our years of laughter, shared meals, amazing conversations and adventures through my mind. As far as a positive and major transformational influence on my life, I think Gay had more impact than any other. I also know we closed every conversation with “I love you” so that’s the last thing I said to her…

May her journey into the light be joyful and easy.

From near-sighted to far–what a journey

Last week I had my second cataract surgery. The surgery has taken me from a lifetime of near-sightedness to being very far-sighted now. Doctors talked about the likelihood of that but failed to mention how disorienting and discombobulating that can be.

The first vision therapist I saw long ago worked a lot with the emotional connections associated with eyes. One of the things he talked about was how near-sightedness is caused by emotional trauma and tightening the muscles around the optic nerve. It’s a way, he said, of blurring the edges of a world found too harsh. Seeing more clearly close in also tends to pair with being more inward and introverted.

Far-sightedness, on the other hand, involves being more out there in the world. Many athletes are far-sighted — that ability to see sharply at a distance serves well in many sports. Because closer in sight is not so good, they also often have a tough time in school unless someone realizes they need assistance to see for reading, etc. They are usually more extroverted.

I have an interesting relationship with both sides. Both of my vision therapists commented that the shape of my eyes was far-sighted so being near-sighted was imposed on my natural state by early emotional trauma. I lived very much in tune with the characteristic introvertedness, being almost pathologically shy until I knew people well.

The dichotomy appeared again when I worked with the Enneagram in the ’90’s. Initially I– and everyone around me who knew the Enneagram — assumed I was a 5, which is on the introvert side of the Enneagram and one of the most inward, introverted numbers on the diagram. However I also always felt uncomfortable with the 7 wing and the two places 5s move on the diagram in certain circumstances as I did not relate at all to those characteristics being me..

Later, as I went through the Fisher-Hoffman process I began to look at the Enneagram again and the F-H facilitator and I realized I’m actually a 4, which is on the extrovert side of the diagram, but lived my life almost entirely in its 5 wing. The wings and the 2 places of movement all match for me. And how interesting how that fits with the far-sighted/near-sighted eyes piece. Since then I’ve periodically noted my transformational journey has been moving me ever more outward in the world. Over the years I’ve become far more outgoing and comfortable giving talks, etc.

However, my sight stayed “near” and a lifetime of preferring solitude and quiet still impacts many choices in my life. So, the almost turn-on-a-dime switch from near- to far-sightedness has left me feeling disoriented. Digging out an old pair of reading glasses from contacts days and suddenly having to put them on every time I read anything or even to watch something on my small Fire tablet, feels weird and I’m struggling to adjust.

Even though my journey has been moving me toward this place of clear vision and moving outward in the world, I’m finding my eyes moved a little faster than my emotions were prepared for. Though I realize I’m more attuned to these kinds of emotional-physical connections than most Americans are, I’m still a little surprised that this disorienting change is so little discussed by eye doctors or others who’ve had the surgery.

Fascinating to experience this unfolding. Intrigued to see how long it will take and where it all leads.

Interesting signposts

For a while now I’ve been strongly sensing that the physical healing portion of my journey is drawing to a close and an as-yet-unknown something is coming into being. Other than a few vague insights, I don’t know exactly what the new phase will be and have been pretty content to allow it to unfold. [Apologies for the odd formatting — got this as desired in Word and nothing I can do here will keep the formatting or allow me to replicate it…]

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of signposts about what’s coming, like opening Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Coming to our Senses and finding this quote from Wendell Berry:

“It may be when we no longer know what to do,

we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go,

we have begun our real journey”

Kabat-Zinn, Jon, Coming to Our Senses, p. 1

Or doing a past/present/future reading of the Crystal Mandala Oracle cards and drawing “Ascended Master Yogananda” which reads, in part:

It is your time to assume your place in the world, at the table of the masters, who serve the loving hand of the Divine. You have been asking for your purpose to be more clearly unveiled and manifested in the world. You have endured lessons of patience. You have learned that spiritual progress can be made even without results being immediately obvious. You have learned trust and a willingness to surrender your personal desires into a larger plan. We know that of which you are capable, and we now invite you to step into the next level of empowered service available to your soul in service to the greater plan of divine love unfolding.

Fairchild, Alana, Crystal Mandala Oracle, p. 121

This week I added some odd pointers back to the beginning of my journey. I’ve attended a couple of “zoom” healing services via the Sarasota Center of Light and been really impressed by Rev. AdaRA Walton, who led both. I looked her up and noted she mentioned being attuned to “Amanohuna”. My early teacher, Arthur Cataldo, “received”
the info on Amanohuna and how to attune people back in the mid-80’s and I received 2 levels of attunement in approximately 1989. I got in touch with her and found out that yes, she also had been a student of his.

Then I attended a zoom women’s group meeting where the leader for that day had just made a first encounter with Carolyn Myss and started a discussion based on her book, Anatomy of the Spirit. I never studied with Carolyn Myss and I’m not sure whether I ever read more than excerpts of some of her early work, but she was around in the late 80’s and I knew people who worked with her at the time, so I realized as my friend described the book that I was fairly familiar with Myss’s work even though I did not ever study it. But they represent a bunch of healing energy stuff I’ve done off and on starting back then.

I’ve also watched a couple of online Sarasota Center of Light services, which seem to always include a portion during which a medium does some readings. This again hearkens back to the late 80’s for me, when I was fairly new to the path. The channeled Seth materials were among the first spiritual books I encountered and in those days I also read things by Lazarus, Ramtha, etc. Arthur Cataldo’s now-late wife, Anne, was a channeler I consulted, and I attended quite a few events led by Chicago-area medium Ruth Berger.

The Cataldos pointed me to Gay Luce and Nine Gates Mystery School. I was very taken with the ancient
traditions, having already been practicing yoga for several years. I went on to study further with these Nine Gates teachers:

• Ellen Margron, who taught for 3d Chakra, a Fischer=Hoffman facilitator who’d taken the F-H “process” to greater depths and also created her own work called “Emotional Mastery”
• Serge King, who taught Hawiian Huna for the 6th chakra
• Paul Ray, who taught Sufi for the heart chakra

Other connections led me into vipassana and studying with a Hopi elder. As I moved through these other studies I lost interest in mediums, channeling, etc. Not that I don’t still believe in those things, just lost interest.

I’m finding it pretty intriguing that I’m suddenly face-to-face with several reminders of those early steps on the path. Not sure at this point whether this is just another moment of the Universe presenting things to release or a nudge to turn back to areas of the path that interested me long ago.

My inclination is still to avoid sitting around trying to reason out what “it” is I’m moving into. I’m excited so many strong portents are popping up. It’s helping me feel my sense of the journey moving on to a new phase is accurate and I’m prepared to let it unfold without trying to push or prod or shape it…

:

Healing/heat pads

HealthyLine Far Infrared Heating Pad

Having been guided for a while toward info on various healing pads, I finally purchased the one pictured above, a HealthyLine Far Infrared Heating Pad with jade and tourmaline. But I wandered through some other choices with a huge price tag range and different healing qualities and thought I’d share a bit of what I found. All seem to have claims about helping pain and circulation issues.

It began with a couple of people I know mentioning occasionally how much benefit they get from their Bemer devices. I looked up Bemer and the $4-5,000 price tag deterred me from looking farther. It’s a PEMF, or pulsed electro magnetic field, therapy.

The devices help open circulation/open the body and are being studied for multiple healing effects. Some therapists have Bemer pads in their offices and offer treatments so rather than purchasing you can just pay for an occasional treatment. Not widely available, but you can look up availability here.

Another friend recently purchased one and raved to me about the results for both her and her husband, who has multiple awful symptoms from years of battling cancer. As we talked, though, about the prohibitive price and its benefits, she commented that she credited it mainly with opening the body/energy flow up and said she thought my 36+ years of yoga plus working with Robert Masters’ Psychophysical technique probably meant it would have a less dramatic impact for me.

Then she also mentioned she’d done some research for another mutual friend and came up with the HealthyLine Platinum Mat, which is half the price and has both PEMF and infrared therapy. That’s still way out of my price range so I found it intriguing but not for me. The review article she found: https://www.well-beingsecrets.com/best-pemf-mats-reviews/

Next another friend, who’s also been my frequent bodywork/healing practitioner, brought up her PhyMat Far Infrared Amethyst Heating Pad and how much she loved it. When I mentioned the PEMF pads, she agreed that I’m probably already opened up enough not to need that and felt the somewhat more metaphysical and subtle benefits of the crystals added to these infrared pads (which the HealthyLIne PEMF above also has) would be more for me, added to the pain-relief capability, especially for my ongoing hip issues. This pad brings the price down to $330, so much more in the right ballpark for me.

I’m an inveterate researcher, though, so I started hunting for info on infrared heating pads with crystals. That led me to this review and the HealthyLine Far Infrared pad I wound up choosing. It’s the same company as the PEMF pad my friend came up with and I noted also that customer reviews raved about how great the customer service is, which is something I value. Also $100 less than the PhyMat. So I wound up with a price point much more in line with my budget.

The jade and amethyst in both pads are listed as mainly being there for their calming/relaxing benefits, so the trade to jade felt equal. Then the tourmaline adds some detox and energizing benefits and I really liked the idea of including those. Several friends have since mentioned experiencing the amethyst pads and really loving them, so sounds like that’s a great choice too.

The mat is a new arrival so I’ll wait to review other than to tell you the first thing I noticed was how much energy I felt from the crystals while the mat was still in its plastic wrapper. The recommendation is to use it initially only for short spells and on a pretty low setting. My first round felt good, definitely got into my muscles (an impact that kept unfolding for some hours after) and left my energy really buzzed. I’m looking forward to reaching the point of using it at higher temps and, at least occasionally, longer times.

The in between place

I’ve reached the point of settling in where clearing Dad’s stuff, unpacking my stuff, moving things around, etc. has slowed down. With that slowing, in moments of sitting back, I realize I feel incredibly “in between”.

I can barely take in that I’m now living in this condo. Incredibly thankful my parents bought it 40+ years ago and that my dad kept it in the divorce so the home at least is deeply familiar. Because I never spent large amounts of time here, I don’t know my way around town well and feel as if I’ve landed in foreign territory when I leave home.

The car navigation system is a must for almost every venture out though I finally have been to a couple of places enough I can just drive to them. Other than chatting a bit with neighbors and cashiers, I’ve not met anyone, don’t have friends here… I miss my fave restaurants in Lexington and am struggling to find places here.

I’m still on zoom for regular happenings at the spiritual center I attended in Lexington and my attempt to reach out to a place here has landed no answer, adding to the feeling of being more connected there than here. Once in a while when out driving in territory I really don’t know I feel untethered, lost on another planet.

And deep within the actual physical relocation and sense of being lost in a strange land, I’m at last at the end of the long healing journey and finished with the caretaker role I’ve held for a long time with my mother. I’ve seen those endings coming for some time and realized nothing loomed to be the next phase and I still have no idea what I want to do next.

My main gratitude, as in so many things, is for the many years of meditation, yoga, emotional clearing, etc. that are allowing me to hold a calm space in the face of this uncertain in between place. When the last of the clearing, unpacking, etc. is done I’m hoping for a quiet spell to contemplate, to let the flow of normal life move me in a new direction…

The energy of stuff

In the last 4 months I’ve had an almost non-stop immersion in the practice of letting go of stuff. Some days so much stuff has been emptied that I was literally buzzing and off balance from the energy shift created.

My mom was a hoarder. Never quite got to the level of whole house piled with pathways through, mostly because of her social sensitivity, me insisting periodically on some clearing and the fact it was a big house, so she could pile a couple rooms and the basement and leave some spaces presentable-ish. Most of that, of course, didn’t belong to me, so when Mom died, going through it was a part of my job.

I was also moving to a furnished condo, so even my things needed to be culled, as well as extracted from the midst of Mom’s piles. Among the challenges Mom left, were years and years and years of bags of bills/statements, etc., many of which involved still existent accounts and I had filing cabinets with tons of out-of-date files so there was also a LOT of shredding and a lot of bags of paper recycling.

Then I got to Florida and needed to clear a ton of stuff still in condo from my Dad and his late, second wife. The amount that a combo of junk haulers, me and a guy I hired moved out in 4 days literally left me reeling with the energy shift.

I kind of got used to the oppressive amount of stuff in Mom’s house though I was sometimes aware of the weight of it. Clearing giant amounts at a time, however, really brought home how much energy all that stuff sucked from us. And every time an extraordinary amount exited in a day, whether auction place taking a ton or friends helping me do some clearing, it was startling how palpable the change in the air became.

I’ve known for years that everything has and is energy, but I hadn’t quite taken in the power of energy contained in “stuff”. The process leaves me so much more thoughtful about what’s in my space and how I want to move forward from here.

See No Stranger: an inspiring read

The law was designed to colonize and control the rest of us, not set us free. And yet the founders had invoked words whose power even they could not constrain–justice, freedom, equality, the guarantee of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These were magical words that had a power of their own and seized the imagination of the people for whom they were never meant. In every generation, people had risen up in movements to unleash the magic of these words, to bleed for these words and expand the “we” in “we the people” to include more and more of us. Constitutional Law was an archive of these expansions and contractions.

Kaur, Valerie, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love (One World, 2020), p. 177

I’ve been reading Valerie Kaur’s excellent book, See No Stranger and not only enjoying the book but fascinated by the inner roads its content leads me down. The book is a combo of autobiography and a history of the Revolutionary Love movement she founded.

Ms. Kaur is a Sikh whose family came to the U.S. several generations ago and her commitment to change/transformation began in the wake of 2001 and the backlash of hatred in which many Sikhs suffered violence and death. There were some respects in which her path and mine were similar, politically speaking. I was inspired by the Viet Nam war and the things I learned in college about the many ways our country did not live up to its hype as a welcoming place of freedom.

We both continued to follow those convictions, learning more via things we studied in college, graduate school and then law school. The big difference was that, from the beginning, she “got” how to make every right move from joining with like-minded people, to taking internships and positions that connected her to a more powerful network, to figuring out how to inspire change in a whole community. I never knew how to be that smart about the moves I made; instead I kind of blundered along, studying, volunteering, trying to find jobs that let me help, etc.

One big difference was I homed in, in college, on the “power elite’ aspect of our problem. I quickly understood how deeply the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of the rich and powerful impacts our government and our lives. I studied it from many angles and throughout my anti-war/hippie crowd of friends I talked about it till they told me I was boring. But no one wanted to hear this.

So it’s a little bit hard to launch a movement if you can’t convince anyone there’s even a problem to address. Of course we are now seeing in our country how deeply the rich and corporate factions have affected our lives and that the right wing group is trying to destroy democracy in favor of the rich basically doing whatever they want while everyone struggles, starves, suffers, etc.

But I will admit, I grew up just thinking you got an education and got a job and things fell into place, so I was clueless about seeking out networks, taking positions that would seat me next to power, etc. I can see how many times and ways I failed to make moves that might have put me in a better position to be an influencer.

My dad spent many years at Buick as a second in command in a department which he pretty much ran while a variety of others kept getting promoted over him and then on to higher positions without ever having really done anything in his department. It was years before I realized it boiled down to those other men knowing how to play the political game and my dad hanging out believing that if you worked hard and did the right thing you’d be rewarded. That’s just how I grew up.

What I did do always was to find where I could volunteer to help with environmental issues or get a job where those issues were addressed, attended rallies and marches for many causes and wrote lots of letters to senators and reps. Just a quiet dedication to trying to do something, however small. And I know the world needs the foot soldiers who just do those little things.

But I always kinda wanted to be more like Valarie, moving into a position to influence and really impact change. Very inspiring to read her book. And I love her Revolutionary Love movement!

Unwinding update

It’s been a while since I’ve given an update on the unwinding muscles in my face and head. The process has been relentless for most of the last year, without regard to how many other things claimed time and attention (like my mother’s hospital and nursing home stays, etc.). And it’s been down at the core for so long I’ve regularly thought I’d be able to start posting the “Unwound” series I’ve long been planning.

But it’s still going. And it’s been more debilitatingly constant since my mother’s death than ever. It’s become so rare to sleep for an entire night, I can’t actually tell you the last time I did. The awe-inspiring part is feeling these granite-like ropes of muscle open and how blood and prana begin to flow in places where nothing has gone through for decades. Or looking across at a bookshelf or objects on the counter and realizing I’m seeing them more clearly at the distance I’m standing than ever.

The more the energy opens up, the more I’m connecting with the “inner voice” that I’ve blocked so long. The opening is also restoring a lot of energy flow. I’ve noted before how very much energy it takes both to hold onto those tight knots and twists and for blood, oxygen, prana, etc. to fight to find pathways through your body. So the more open I become the better I feel — especially helpful since I’m not getting nearly enough sleep.

Not surprising, all this shifting in my physical body, which has always related to both personal and ancestral issues, is creating some shifts in my life. And it feels like a big one is looming. Not just the fact that I’m moving to another state, something else feels large and near.

Such mixed feelings keep flowing through about leaving this town that’s not only been home longer than any other place I’ve lived, but has such deep ancestral roots for me. For a while I got strong messages indicating it’s time to let go and it may be better to live some place where I don’t have so many nostalgic childhood associations. Then a friend who has amazing abilities to tune in psychically said I’m corded here and I just need to let go of the cord. As soon as we hung up I threw up, accompanied by a strong sensation of letting go.

One of the teachings in the Fisher-Hoffman process I went through long ago is that the final piece of letting go of Mother is literally “throwing up mother”. I also felt strongly a letting go re: mom in that moment and that the cord my friend saw included her.

In the meantime I’m down to about 3 weeks before I’m aiming to move and I’m caught in the house with a ton of Mom’s stuff still here, estate sale places telling me nothing has enough value for them to do a sale, working madly to sort, dump, shred decades of paperwork she left behind, extract the belongings I want to take with me and get them packed, figure out handling the reverse mortgage people, choosing between U-Haul and moving company… and doing it all on way too little sleep accompanied by lots of buzzy, weird feelings and nausea and headaches all due to the wild unwinding muscles.

Fun times. Not…

The upside is through all of it I feel all of this transition from the loss of my mother to the loss of my home to starting over in a new place to finally reaching the end of an unbelievably long healing journey with my muscles is leading to the massively transformed life I’ve worked, shifted, transitioned toward for 37 years.

What does “my own schedule” look like?

Since Mom’s death, several people have asked me about my new “freedom” of schedule now that I don’t have all the caretaking duties. From my perspective I just traded one set of time-dictating “musts” for another. And it has me contemplating how we all so often set up our days by the “musts”.

Losing my mother set off an emotional roller coaster of its own and on top of losing her, because of a lot of not very smart decisions she made years ago, instead of inheriting the house in which I’ve lived for 24 years and a sizeable trust fund, materially I’ve inherited nothing from her but a giant hoarder’s mess to clean up and the need to move with great speed to pack up and move to the condo in Florida my dad’s more careful ways left me.

Some of the time I’m pretty angry and put upon. Until I remember the privilege that means I have a condo to move into and enough money to scrape by for a while.

The last months of her life, taken up with hospitals, nursing homes, diapers, wheelchair, etc. were exhausting and the second she died I had to begin the even more tiring task of clearing out her unbelievable piles of crap and trying to separate out and pack up my own stuff for the move. So no, at the moment I don’t feel free.

And Salty apparently decided to help me see it. He’s very old and frail and really upset by all that’s changing around him, from the absence of Mom to furniture and items disappearing and moving around, etc. He climbed on my lap a while ago for a snooze. I had a packing schedule in mind and the snooze was interfering.

I sat for a couple of minutes, tense and worrying about being late already at starting. He gently snoozed, his head tucked under my chin. I tuned in and noted the tenseness and chose to relax into the lovely moment with my fur baby. I’m not sure he’s going to live through all this and I’d rather drink in his sweetness while I can than be sorry later that I was too busy packing to enjoy him.

I’ve also been thinking about how nice it will be once I get to FL and at least largely unpacked. No caretaking. No clearing and sorting after I finish getting the dad/stepmom stuff I don’t want out of the condo and my stuff put in place. Ah, but then I remembered, in order to survive, I have to re-start yoga teaching, figure out doing classes on line, etc. Or get a job. How long can I float and relax, schedule-free, before I must get moving again?

Which then started me thinking about how many days when I have nothing on the schedule like an appointment or a lunch, etc. I still feel I “must” go to the grocery, do a load of laundry, make a new batch of granola or cashew creamer. How free is my schedule ever? And don’t most of us have these daily “musts”? Actual days of floating along, doing nothing are pretty hard to come by unless you have the money to pay someone else to fix your meals, including getting the provisions, or to take spa vacations.

Now I’m contemplating how little activity still leaves me feeling my day is “free” and mine. Much relies on perception and how I choose to feel about what I need to do. My mother resented pretty much all domestic tasks (she grew up in a household with a housekeeper and a cook) and I realized years ago that I internalized that dislike.

I have to actively shift my emotions just to get to neutral. Thanks to how much I love the smell of Mrs. Meyers cleaning products and love a clean floor, I’ve come to enjoy mopping and ignore the twinging back that results, which leads me to believe I can manage to shift the “ugh” feeling about other chores 🙂

I figure the whole schedule thing is mostly a question of staying in tune with how I feel about all the aspects of my day and choosing the feeling tone that leaves me also feeling free. But I’m not sure I’m gonna get there about clearing 30 years of clutter or packing for a move…

Between grief and relief

A number of years ago, when both my parents were into their 80s, a friend asked how I was going to cope when they both died. I thought a second and said, “I think I’ll take the first free breath of my life”. Now I’m there, my dad having died 2 years ago and my mother last month.

Right now, of course, the loss of my mother is fresh and in this case we’d been living in the same house for almost 24 years so I’m also feeling a general loss of companionship. I’m still at the phase of bursting into tears multiple times a day and wishing she could still be here.

But I also feel that sense of relief. The immediate relief is at being set free from the caretaker duties. I was glad to be able to keep my mom well cared for, but it was a lot, especially since my own health issues didn’t disappear just because she needed me. But concerning both parents the story had bigger dimensions.

They each survived a fairly awful childhood and both were clearly emotionally damaged. Besides being physically and emotionally abusive, they also had very vulnerable child-like aspects and I knew from an early age that they both relied on me–their only child–somehow to make up for their troubles, to keep them from breaking, etc.

After having met both my parents and spent some time, one of my friends told me that if I ever operated with a feeling of being watched all the time (I did) I came by it naturally as they were each intensely focused on me and my every move. I felt that pressure most of my life.

So, while I’m also sad to have lost them and sad that their lives held so much unhappiness, I also feel great relief peeking through the grief. I can take a free breath now. Sometimes I feel guilty for that relief. More of the time I feel like it’s only fair to get to live a portion of my life without their needs and expectations hovering over my shoulder.

I’m also really glad I went through the Fisher-Hoffman process long ago and continued to use the process to explore inner feelings, the past, etc. I released huge amounts of anger toward them long ago. With mom that remained a work in progress till we were finally able to just say “I love you” near the end and sit holding hands. With my dad I had actually managed to transform from the place of underlying anger constantly seething, to feeling much more balanced in my dealings with him, even tender as he grew more fragile.

I feel that work with the F-H process is helping me a lot to work through these shifting emotions and also studies with the same facilitator which she called “Emotional Mastery”. Both helped me to just allow emotions to move in, to feel the feelings, to know that I can choose to move to another, etc. Our society doesn’t do enough (anything?) to help people feel their feelings and learn to navigate them.

At a time like this, not only am I grateful for the calm and equanimity 36 years of yoga and meditation have brought me, but so grateful for all I’ve learned about feelings and emotions. Even twenty years ago I’d have fallen apart (and driven my friends crazy with my anxiety) at all I’ve had to cope with in the last 2+ years. I feel like I’m making my way pretty well through volatile emotions while still being able to get done what must be done so much better than I ever could have in the past.

A Week of Chanting

The first week of January turned into a week of chanting and chanting for me, not entirely by design, but a delightful accumulation of events. I signed up for “Ecstatic Chant” a six-day workshop featuring Deva Premal & Miten, Jai Uttal and Krishna Das, not having noted that Deva and Miten were also doing the second annual New Year’s week daily 108 round Gayatri and not assuming Krishna Das would also do his regular Thursday satsang. But all were happening and I really worked at keeping up.

Managed to do every day of the 108 round Gayatri, which I find incredibly powerful. This time it also became more of an exercise in mindfulness than usual, which I’ll discuss more below. Also got to tune in for the satsang. The workshop I fit in around the other things (plus, you know, I have a life) as best I could — still have some to watch so very grateful they’re giving us a month to see the videos.

I’m not sure I have adequate words to describe how it felt by the end of the week to spend that many hours a day chanting and/or listening to chant. Extraordinary. Uplifting. Pulsating. All are true and yet don’t quite say how amazing it was. Really loved it!

The first day of the Gayatri there were either transmission problems or my YouTube was acting up — they often have trouble with signals in Costa Rica and YouTube has been screwing up for me a LOT — but the Gayatri was stopping and starting, stopping and starting. I was using my mala beads but I kept singing on into dead spaces and then picking up again with them when the stream re-started. Soon I was struggling to decide where I was on the beads and realizing the struggle was moving me out of connection with the mantra.

Thus the chant became a challenge for staying mindful. Only at the end did I laugh as I realized I could have just put the beads down… Meanwhile I considered the challenge well met when I wound up in the right place with the beads while keeping attention on the mantra. Afterwards I realized the starting and stopping and beads distraction had kept me from feeling thrown by the super fast guitar playing that goes on in sections of the 108 round version.

The next day the transmission was fine and when the –to-me– frantic guitar playing started my heart started pounding and my stomach tightened up as usual. Then I remember how the distractions the day before had kept me from reacting and concentrated on the lyrics to move me into the chant and out of noticing. Good reminder that I can mindfully make choices about how to react and what to notice, etc.

I thoroughly enjoyed the workshop sessions viewed so far and Krishna Das’ Thursday evening satsangs are always good. I will say as far as the workshop, not much was done kirtan style and many chants were new to me so while I loved every minute, listening was not as spiritually expansive for me as it is to chant the Gayatri with the Global Gayatri Sangha — often thousands of us at a time from around the world.

The overall experience of spending hours and hours in one week chanting was divine. In a future post I’ll talk about how my slow, tentative launch onto a path of chanting is contributing to the “sparkles” I discussed in the last post.

All the Sparkle

Increasingly over the last couple of years I’ve noticed the world looking more sparkly. Literally looking around and seeing things shining, sparkling everywhere.

It started from the very practical purchase of a new dishwasher. a couple of years ago. It took some months but eventually it managed to clear off all the collected lime on glasses and silverware and I started noticing how shiny they looked. But it’s kept going from there.

The last couple of years have seen a lot of movement for me on emotional and health issues, including some big shifts in outlook. A really psychic friend of mine commented recently when I talked about all that’s been opening up in the muscles in my face and how it has been changing my world that she pictured me literally getting rid of anchors all around me that had been holding me stuck in place for years. Perfect fit for how it’s been feeling and my long-time sense the tight muscles have been instrumental in “stuckness”.

This sense of being more free on many levels and finally moving forward is so powerful. And I feel like a good deal of the sparkle I see around flows from that.

A huge amount of the tightness in my facial muscles has been centered around keeping my optic nerve squeezed tight, which causes near-sightedness according to my late, amazing vision therapist, Dr. Sirota. As the muscles finally loosen, I periodically notice increments of seeing more clearly; the clear field moving outward an inch or two at a time. The opening lately leaves me feeling that the changing vision also contributes to seeing all those sparkles.

Wherever it comes from, I must say, I LOVE looking around the world and seeing sparkles!!!

Teetering: “Righteous Anger” and Compassion

As mentioned off and on for a while, I’m struggling with anger over so man things that are going on. Periodically I realize I’m back screaming at certain “leaders” every time their faces appear, grinding my teeth as I scan social media and follow links to read more, and, a couple of weeks ago when a station I was watching moved from old shows to airing some kind of evangelical church service, I found myself angrily making up words to the hymn they started with and singing: “My Jesus hates you, and we kill, kill, kill…”

Being self-aware enough to see this is DEFINITELY in conflict with my beliefs about holding a space of love, peace and compassion, I keep circling back to questioning the source of the anger and how to shift it. And one puzzle I constantly come back to, is how to be “righteously” angry and yet hold that space.

Many spiritual leaders and writers feel there is such a thing as righteous anger and that, when great wrongs are being committed, we must all feel that anger and do something toward righting the wrong. None seem to address how such anger impacts the energy of the web nor do they seem to offer much advice about how to feel that angry and still find the love and compassion with which to “do something” but do it with nonviolence.

I have long been unconvinced that “righteous” anger is any different, energetically speaking, than any other. It worries me when I react with anger because I can feel how it takes hold and shoves the loving, peaceful aspect of me out of function. And since I believe the energy space each of us holds adds up to the totality of energy that is All That Is, every time one of us is angry instead of loving, our energetic contribution to the web is the energy of anger.

Most of the spiritual leaders who say it’s fine to be outraged over injustice, etc. but to be nonviolent in what you do about it, seem remarkably silent on the question of how to move from the angry place of the one to the compassionate place of the other. I’d guess the majority of people aren’t well equipped to transition on a dime from place to the other.

I see 3 main arenas we as individuals can work on to help us in recognizing the wrongs that need to be righted but stay compassionate and develop non violent solutions:

1. Ferreting out repressed anger (or other deeply held negative emotions). I’ve noted the above video before and I really like how deeply it works on transforming anger but there are many other methods, including “process” work like Fischer-Hoffman, the Diamond Heart approach, transpersonal psychology, etc. Just find the mode that works for you.
2. Being able to stay present in the moment is really important. If you can’t even stay conscious enough to realize anger has grabbed you and it’s time to shift away, how you can move into non violent responses? I include more than just sitting vipassana; chanting (sung or spoken), movement practices like yoga or qi gong, and some guided meditations like yoga nidra are all ways that people of different temperaments can tune into the present.
3. Long ago I read some spiritual leader saying the key to coping with emotions and events coming at you is to allow them to pass through you without affecting.  One of many teachings that’s easier said than done. I think it takes a lot of practice and dedication to reach a place where you don’t even have to think about staying in the space of lovingkindness and compassion and calm.

There are many ways to work on holding that space.  One factor is how you “feed” yourself in your life.  Are you doing practices like metta or singing chats or meditating (whatever form) regularly? Are you reading books like Tara Brach’s 

Tools for holding peace

I mentioned a while back that I’ve been struggling with the division and anger and finding myself angry much more often.  I keep hauling myself back to a place of equanimity and then suddenly there I am, screaming f**k you at a McConnell ad (if you live elsewhere, try to imagine being inundated with an ad in which he pretends the help for regular people in the stimulus package was spearheaded entirely by him…) or screaming and throwing things at the sight of the pumpkinhead.

I always know if I’m that angry, something in me is being triggered.  I also am figuring out I’m just enough of an empath that the huge amount of anger in the air affects me strongly as well. So I’ve been looking inward and working on clearing those things in me which contribute.  Two of Steve Nobel’s recent meditations have been really helping me bring some deep personal, ancestral and collective anger buried in me to the surface and also to release a lot of fear– especially that which others’ fear is engendering.

The one time I managed to get an appointment with Hanna for my hip issues, she began talking about this “Transforming Anger” meditation while working on one of the patterns and I understood she was feeling suppressed anger there. One of the times I did the meditation some of the stuck stuff in there released and, though it didn’t heal it all, it’s never been as bad since.

I’ve been alternating that one with another for releasing fear. Wasn’t sure I needed it at first, but I know there’s a lot of fear in the air right now, so thought I’d try it and realized there’s still some old fear from family stuff and some ancestral fear deep in there. Also that the energy of huge amounts of fear running through our society about the virus, the economy, etc. has permeated some layers of my being even though I don’t consciously share them.

I’ve had a very strong “hit” more than once that it’s really important for me right now to do each of these once or twice a week.  Along with a feeling this healing isn’t just for myself.

And for helping to raise my vibration and hold the space of love, I play this affirmation recording as I go to sleep both for naps and at night:

Soon I plan to add my old fave lovingkindness/Gayatri mantra chanting practice.

How about all of you?  What are you doing to hold the space of peace and compassion?  If you have a great meditation or other practice that’s on line, please throw in a link so others can try your faves.