Theory on a String (Of Conversations), Pt. III

“Gio, I’ve been tapping into your energy lately, and it’s all over the place!  What’s going on?  And how can I help?”

Waking up to that text after two different friends called me out on my crap was interesting to say the least.

Now, I have a second name that my friends use here in the canyon where I live.  The story is simple and goes like this:

My roommate, who wasn’t my roommate at the time, could never remember my name when first we met 2 years ago.  I would tell her my name was Jon, and she would always forget every time I sneaked into her little eatery, in my pajama pants with my baseball cap pulled low to hide the tired look in my eyes, to buy the occasional eggs and the French Vanilla coffee cream.  She finally told me one day that I didn’t look like a Jon, and that was why she couldn’t get my name embedded in her mind.  Well, I went to work that day at the Italian restaurant, and a group of ladies decided that they too didn’t think that I looked like a Jon, so they decided to re-name me for the day as Giovanni.  I told Carolyn, and voila, a new name was born, and it’s been around for the last two years.  So there you go.  Back to the subject at hand.

I was only slightly amazed at the text I had received that morning, considering the source.  It was a friend of mine that does massage therapy, but who she is and what she does is so much more than that.  She has been to Peru, lived and studied with shamans and she has drunk the ayhuasca, a psychoactive drink that induces visions and such, which has, according to her observations, increased her talents in different ways.

The point being, that when she talks about tapping into my energy, I know very well how capable and adept she is with such things.

I texted her back, asking if we could meet up to speak about it, as the subject of my scattered energy was too much to discuss in texts or even on the phone for that matter.  She agreed to meet me at her office.

Walking into her place is what I would think it would be like to walk into a meditation temple.  It’s energy is calm and soothing, and you instantly know that you’re in a place where healing takes place in myriad, wonderful ways.

“So, what’s going on?’

Well, you said that my energy is all over the place.  What does that mean to you?

Now, like I said, I know this woman, and I have worked with this woman in the practitioner/client sense, so I know what she can do, but I wasn’t really prepared for the depth she was about to show me.

She began recounting almost step-by-step the things that were occurring in my life.  And I mean it was detail oriented to an almost freaky degree.  I sat there, my best poker face on, not wanting to give away my amazement at her accuracy.

“I feel like you’re going through some huge transitions.  But this time is different from the others you have experienced.  I feel like you’re really doing the work this time.  Does that make sense?”

It did.

“You’ve been here before, but you’re really digging, really being introspective, and you’re really ready to make the necessary steps you need to this time.  That’s all great, but I have words of caution for you too.”

No good deed goes unpunished is what they say in this particular situation, I believe.

“You have to be careful of what you accept.  You are given things because of the way you look, because of the charming capabilities you have, and that type of thing.  You know what I’m talking about.”

It wasn’t a question.  And I knew what she was talking about.

“You have to find a balance.  This is perhaps your biggest lesson right now.  Accept things, but be sure you give back equally.  You haven’t always given back equally, but now it’s more important than ever that you do.  You’re funny in a way.  You go to the extreme in these matters.  You feel you deserve to receive certain things and you don’t at the same time.  You’re kind of like an ego-maniac with an inferiority complex.”

I hadn’t thought about myself quite like that before, but I knew she was right.  It was a brilliant observation.

“It’s also very important that you follow through.  That is probably the second most important thing you need to understand and learn right now.  It’s close to the balance lesson, but more likely it’s just a bit behind in terms of priority for your growth and learning right now.  You must follow through in order to do the things you have come here to do.”

The things I am here to do.

Well, if things come in three’s, then I suppose I just received my third.  But the conversations weren’t finished.  Spirit itself still had a couple of things to say to me.

Published in: on July 6, 2011 at 11:51 am  Comments (10)  
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Deconstructing the Separation, Part I

“Our separation of each other is an optical illusion of consciousness.” – Albert Einstein

I think it safe to expand on this quote by my buddy, Al, in the following manner:  Our separation of and from everything, including each other, is an optical illusion of consciousness.  This is simply a modern view of quantum mechanics.  Everything is made of energy, made up mostly of empty space, connected by a giant web of ethereal particles, with no real separation, anywhere.

I have spoken at great length, or so it has felt, about the animals, the signs, and ultimately, the magic that is surrounding us.  Don’t you think that the lack of a “true” separation of everything, or more succinctly, the fact that Everything is connected, is just the most awesome concept around which to wrap your mind?  Hell, I do!  But I’m also a nerd, so I guess I have a good excuse.

Since the shadow cat leapt into my ear, there have been no end to the messages in the form of the cat coming my way.  According to some schools of thought, the animal’s appearance in the form of a shadow carries a significance different from, say the Eagle, or the Hawk, or the Jack rabbit that made their presence known to me on this journey.  The shadow represents a lesson that I am not hearing, not getting, and the shadow is there to help me realize that I am, indeed, missing the lesson, to wake up, pay attention, and so on, and so forth.  In fact, some think of the shadow spirit as a sort of last resort, the final straw, where you need to seek out the lesson your missing by tracing the shadow animal back to its original purpose, then sit, listen, and absorb and  assimilate the lesson before it’s too late.  So what did this shadow cat mean to me?

The cat, in general, represents an agility in the mind and body.  It provides clear perception, even in the dark (or the dark places of our lives).  The cat is also a strong spiritual challenger for the human spirit, encouraging us to consider new ideas and new places.  Cat represents courage and strength.  Recall the prayer to the Jaguar, while I was facing the west on Bell Rock, and you’ll see that I prayed for these types of attributes and qualities, and the cat, is a kind of little jaguar, if you will.

So how do I interpret this for my life?  Let’s break it down, because I want to demonstrate how accurate, how magical this all really is.  Keep in mind that this is from the shadow side of the cat, so these are things on which I need to act immediately.

Cat represents:

  • agility in body – The agility for my body is simple and straightforward.  I was so stressed out from my 3 months of personal assisting that my body gained 15 pounds.  I needed to get back in balance.
  • agility in mind – Again, for me, this is somewhat obvious.  My mind is my talent, my tool, it creates my voice, and, in turn, the words you read here.  I needed to get back to the exercising of that muscle.
  • consider new ideas – I have struggled in my belief and confidence in my writing.  This trip to the desert, with the help of my friend, the I Ching, the meditations, and all of the happenings of this journey, made a firm statement that I needed to let go of the fear, start writing, and just believe in the ideas I have for books, stories, and whatever else is floating around up there.
  • consider new places – New York has been calling me for years.  I heard it, but I didn’t really believe that either.  Until now.  If you read “Once Again“, you already understand.
  • courage and strength – I don’t know anyone that couldn’t use more courage and strength in life.  That is not to say that we cannot tap into the flow, be in the zone and dance gracefully, beautifully with the flow of this life.  We can all do that anytime, and sometimes we do, and sometimes we don’t, but the cat is there if you need her (it could be a him for you).  Shadow Cat was there to tell me that the time is now.  Be strong now!  Be courageous now!

It is difficult to dispute that all of these messages make sense for the “where” and the “what” of everything I have been seeing, feeling and experiencing.  And the other animals?  All just as poignant, but the cat wasn’t quite finished speaking.

Published in: on November 9, 2010 at 1:08 pm  Leave a Comment  
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The Prodigal Traveler

I feel like a stranger in my own home.  I know I have been here before, but like Eliot, I feel I have been taken through the unknown, unremembered gate, and here I stand knowing this place for the first time.

The fear that mounts after not having written for a while is surprisingly overwhelming.  And if you have followed along with me at all, then you may recognize my pattern.  I don’t write when I don’t feel good.  Feeling great, the words cascade from my brain to the nervous system that drives the fingers to do the typing.  The blog has become an almost obligation to those of you that do follow, which has also been such a surprise to me (both my feelings surrounding it and the fact that any of you actually read this stuff,) and the tension surrounding that idea that I allow to build up sometimes freezes me from the delivery of the tales of this journey.  It’s almost like I know I have to tell my significant other something (that’s you all,) and I don’t know how to start.  So I wait.  And you know, and I know that something has to be said at some point, but no one really knows how to broach the subject.  And so, here we are.

I do things now that I certainly would have never done before, much less admit to anyone, and yet I blog.  I say prayers or incantations into my water glass, I envision little golden Buddha’s traveling through my hand and into my food, I meditate on a regular basis, I see dragons in the clouds.  Then some days, some moments, I come crashing back to Earth in a very raw fit of humanity.  It’s those days, those moments, that I freeze.

Dr. Ken Best seems to have a penchant for taking my hand and leading me to tears on the days when I feel the highest.  When I want nothing more than to fling myself into the throws of a good sob session, I end up being put on the conveyor belt, processed, and released to my own devices.  Oh! but to come in flying, feeling the divinity of life is apparently the precursor to Ken’s subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) machinations of pricking the most tender parts at the very heart of my soul and spirit.

I am both terrified and exhilarated to be this awake.  The implications and the obligations that come along with awareness are wonderful, magical, stupefying and sometimes paralyzing too.  And to think that I have only just begun to journey this path.

I owe it to myself to be as amazing and wonderful as my personal capability and capacity allows.  So do you.  If I find myself suddenly awakened in an area of life, then good on me, but if it stops there, then what was the point of being awakened?  I owe it to you to share and try to help you raise your awareness also.  And vice versa, I pray that you will awaken me in the areas where you see I am still sleeping.  It only serves to keep this all to ourselves if we believe that everything is disconnected.

It’s easy to see how I personally impact those people in my direct line of life.  I don’t really see how I impact those not in my immediate vicinity, but I get your emails and comments as evidence.  More interestingly, we rarely ever get to see how we impact the lives of others indirectly.  There is a great commercial campaign (I think for an insurance company, maybe, of all things) where a person does a good deed, someone else sees it, then, in turn, decides to do another good deed for someone else and so on.

Sometimes this blog feels like spiritual masturbation.  It’s been accused of being self-indulgent, but what else do any of us have in this life other than our own interpretation of things?  I only know what I know as I know it and not before.  An acting teacher once told us the story of two old ladies going to see some play, let’s say Hamlet for the sake of the illustration, and they walked out talking about it being the best play about polka dotted elephants they had ever seen.  The point was that they loved their interpretation of the play, and it didn’t matter if it was right or wrong.  And for that matter, who is to say what is or was right or wrong?

I realize that this post may just be as disjointed as I have been or felt recently.  Much is changing right now.  This change is not just with me, but others have spoken to me about the changes they are enduring, grasping or feeling recently as well.

I’ll make you a deal.  If you’ll take my hand, then I’ll take yours too, and perhaps, together we can remember the unknown gate and find ourselves alive, awake and aware and knowing so much more as if for the first time.

The Happy Heart, Part III

Remembering these moments from my past brought in a new focus for me to which I had otherwise heretofore been completely oblivious.  The epiphany?  I have the ability to shine, and I have the ability to clam up, to disappear, but I have colored it humility to make myself feel that I was doing something right or pious or proper.  In fact, nothing could be more erroneous or selfish.

I had stopped myself from demolishing my fellow students intellectually, but I was cocky and confident enough physically to take it upon myself to win basketball games by exposing the opposing team’s weakness without as much as a second thought.  There was a barrage of images and brain videos from both sides of myself, which begged the question of why I allow one side or the other to dominate depending on how I view the situation, and more importantly, how I view what the repercussions may be to anyone in my wake.  Just a note of observation and something I will clearly have to monitor, it seems that physical prowess and the aspiration to physically be the best is completely acceptable for me, while intellectual mastery is to be wielded with extreme caution regardless of intent, but especially if it purposely or inadvertently has the potential to cause another to feel inferior in any way.

This all has very little to do with the exercise of The Happy Heart, but it is what came up during the hike, and I just report the facts ma’am.  Ok, that’s not entirely true.  It was the moments in my life during which I have shined unabashedly that informed my Happy Heart Meditation.

About three-quarters of the way up the trail to my pre-determined destination, I found my spot.  I hadn’t expected it, but the rock called me, and I answered.

Approximately twenty or thirty minutes up Mt. Wilson Trail from the trail head, a boulder juts out over a ravine that comfortably holds a stream in its grasp at its lowest point.  Normally, the sound of the water running through is faint at best, and more often than not, non-existent at worst.  The boulder was something I seem to have missed in the dozen or more times that I have traversed the rocky climb.  It was perfect.  It looked as if it were cut for the seat of some giant. With an ample backrest that ended about the middle of my scapula, and a width that could comfortably seat three across, it was almost too perfect (whatever that means.)  Although I would not want to be the person on the far side of this enormous natural chair as it precariously dangles a good three feet off the edge of the trail.

So, to remind you quickly, here are the directions again:

  1. Pick an image, event, person or anything that evokes a deep feeling of happiness.
  2. Imagine your heart as a large, oval room with you sitting in the center.
  3. Begin to see this deep feeling of happiness filling up the oval room of your heart.
  4. When the room is full to bursting with this feeling of happiness, allow the feeling to escape through windows of your heart and move into your entire body.

I have had some difficulty imagining sitting in my heart.  Sometimes, my brain works so linearly and literally that sitting in my heart seems ridiculous to my “rational” mind.  How do you sit in your heart?  I don’t know.  But if I did know, I would sit the way I did atop the Giantess’ rock (an inordinate amount of male references is quite boring as it’s been done so often by so many, myself included,  literarily speaking.)

I closed my eyes.  I felt the rock beneath me and behind me, comforting me, cradling me.  I listened to the water rushing through, over and around rocks in the ravine below.  I felt the cool breeze wash over my body with it’s sweet, fresh smell and the sunlight’s warmth on my back.  I watched the young 15 year old Jon Snow, mopping a floor with real joy at a school he never liked.  I saw the man offer me a job.  But I was still sitting on my borrowed boulder along Mt. Wilson Trail.

This went on for about ten minutes.  Seeing myself proud, happy and joyful, but still sitting on a rock on the side of a mountain.  Then it hit me.  I was sitting.

Then it was a landslide (not literally, thankfully.)  The Giantess’ rock was the seat inside my heart.  The mountains, the water, the breeze, the sunshine, my quaint little town back down below, California, the whole world was inside my heart.  How big is the world, I mean really, when it’s all said and done?  And what is big when the only frame of reference is the limited human sensory experience?  My heart is bigger.

I felt the room that was the world inside my heart fill up with this joy until it was ready to burst.  It was a warm, golden light.  The world and my heart could no longer contain it all.  It rushed into my arms first, then filled my torso and spread down to my legs and finally exploded through the top of my head.  I basked in the beauty of it all for a bit.

I was buzzing.  My whole body was tingling as I opened my eyes once again.  A huge smile broke across my face, well, at least it was there for a moment.  It was so powerful that I had a slight moment of vertigo before I cautiously climbed off the stone upon which I sat.  Then I let out a booming laugh at the thought of me falling off my perch that echoed throughout the ravine.

The Happy Heart, Part II

So, there I was slowly, yet steadily climbing the mountain trail surrounded by images of my childhood that showed me the different sides of me.  I remembered when I was 15 and I was mopping a floor at the private Christian high school in which I was enrolled at the time, and a gentlemen that owned a Subway approached me and offered me a job because I was working so diligently with my mop.  I remembered being so proud that I had been offered a job.  And the smile of disappointment (yes, you read that correctly) on his face when he realized he could not hire me for another year.  He told me to look him up in a year if I wanted a job.

I remembered a basketball game in which we were down by 2 points.  With time running out, I found myself with the ball just inside the left wing of the 3-point line.  I remembered looking at the clock, just like every kid that shoots hoops imagines it, 3-2-1.  I looked at my feet.  I looked at the clock.  I looked at the score.  No one seemed to want to defend me, so I made a decision.  I dribbled twice, backward, behind the 3-point line to set my feet.  I shot.  The buzzer sounded.  The ball tickled the twine dangling beneath the basket, and, like any good, cocky shooter, I just left that hand up in the air for all to see the perfect form with which I had just won the game.

Those two scenes and many more played before my mind’s eye as I traversed up the narrow, rocky trail.

I began to relive many little scenes throughout my youth.  Some wonderful, some not so much.  We established in the Ascending to the Madness series that there are many sides to me, and that, until recently, part of the problem regarding my lack of an unfettered ascent had been that all of me were not on the same page.  So began the barrage of scenes of the different sides that have been with me most of my life.

I was around 10 years old.  My father was going to school, they didn’t call it seminary, but for all intents and purposes, he was studying at a Bible college to become an ordained minister, so we’ll color it seminary.  I grew up with the Bible coming out of my ears.  I was such an excellent student that I was asked to represent the entire fourth grade (if memory serves) and participate in the Bible Olympics the school held every year.  It was a great honor, or so they told me.

At the Bible Olympics, I knew every answer to every single question, without fail.  I knew every answer before every other competitor seated at the long table that seemed to stretch on forever on the basketball court of our school’s gymnasium.  Question after question.  Answer after answer.  They were all mine.  I hit my buzzer not a single, solitary time.  I froze.

I saw myself sitting there, this stiff, terror-stricken little 10 year old.  A big red buzzer button awaiting my slap, a punch, just a delicate touch?  I gave it nothing.  The crowd in the bleachers seemed to come down on top of me, crowding me, the lights blinding me.  I was frozen.  I was scared.  Too scared to even hit a buzzer.  Stage fright was only a small part of it.  Mostly, I was scared to make the other kids look stupid.  I could have.  I could have intellectually obliterated all of them.  I could have run the entire table of questions without fail.  Even when a question seemingly stumped the entire group, little Jon Snow knew the answer, but even then, I didn’t allow him to even put a shadow of his hand across the face of that ominous red button.

The Happy Heart, Part I

So, remember, oh, I don’t know, let’s be gracious to me and say, a month or so ago when I started Ken’s Rewriting Your Life program?  I told you there were daily exercises and journal entries and all sorts of stuff to keep me busy and on task, remember?  Yeah, I haven’t really been doing all that.  I just finished Day 5.  Ken’s going to give me no end of crap when he reads this one.  But, I’m back on track, not beating myself up too badly for my lackadaisical attitude or lack of stick-t0-itiveness.  And Day 5 has a cool homework assignment.

The Happy Heart exercise asks me to sit inside my heart once again, the same way I did way back in October when I did the Heart Song exercise.  I like this exercise much better, well, that’s not fair to say better because Heart Song certainly has its purpose and usefulness, but Happy Heart is what it says it is, and the Heart Song, well, that requires a bit of diving into the mire of sadness that accumulates in the heart.  Both extremely important, but I think we all prefer the light, fluffy stuff when it comes to matters of the heart.

So, sitting inside my heart, here are the directions:

  1. Pick an image, event, person or anything that evokes a deep feeling of happiness.
  2. Imagine your heart as a large, oval room with you sitting in the center.
  3. Begin to see this deep feeling of happiness filling up the oval room of your heart.
  4. When the room is full to bursting with this feeling of happiness, allow the feeling to escape through windows of your heart and move into your entire body.

Living at the base of a mountain has its privileges for the active body.  You may remember that the impetus for this whole journey was a direct response to how hard I physically push my body and the resulting pain that initially drove me to Ken’s wizardly ways.  The pain is virtually gone, but Ken is still trepidatious about letting me run, which frustrates me greatly, but I’m trusting in the process.  So, I decided that after 4 months of not doing anything, that I would go for a hike on the Mt. Wilson Trail behind my house.  It wasn’t running, but it was something.

The mountain burned about a year and a half ago.  Southern California is no stranger to wildfires, but this one came the very day that I moved into my current place of residence.  It was close enough that I had to evacuate, or so the police and fire departments would have me believe.  Being new to the area, I of course acquiesced.  Later, I found out that ‘manadatory’ evacuation cannot really be enforced, but that’s not really relevant at the moment, so I digress.  I visited the trail again a few months after the fires, but it was a rocky sea of mangled, charred tree trunks and branches, without a speck of green plant life anywhere.  Truly barren and desolate, it was almost depressing.

So, through a combination of the fires, my new found obsession with running on the beach and whatever else life threw my way, yesterday was my first time back to the mountain in quite some time.  My plan was to hike up to what is known as “First Water” about 1.5 miles up the mountain.  The trail head is just under 1000 feet in elevation and First Water just under 2000, not too strenuous, but certainly a workout.  My intention was to hike up and come back down, and then go back home and do my Happy Heart assignment.

It was not my intention to begin finding the things or the reasons or images that made me happy, but, inadvertently, that is what began to happen.  And that was pretty cool.

My Secret Letter To The Gods

Almost one moon has grown full and large, birthed the Darkness that swallowed it whole, before again being impregnated with the life of Light.  This, since last I put pen to paper here in this holy hiding place.  Guarding my secrets, my fears and my secret fears.

Words have been written to show me the power I possess and secretly hold in fear.  Men causing antique aircraft to hover like helicopters, men changing their visage with a simple wave of their hand and passing through walls as if they were made of air, shadows armed with blades as real as the ground beneath my feet (for whatever that may be worth) to spill a man’s blood, driving cars with no gas required, dead men walking as natural as life.

And yet, here I stand, feeling no wiser than I did a month ago when I called upon my brother the Raven.

I feel him inside my body, mind and spirit.  This cage of flesh keeps him safe, or is it my own ego that is safe by his continued imprisonment?

I ask again to be given the strength and courage to burn this physical cell and free the Raven so that we may spread our wings and soar, as brothers, as one.

It is our time.  Thank you.

Published in: on December 23, 2009 at 10:19 am  Leave a Comment  
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Diving Into The Illusion

“Don’t be dismayed at goodbyes.  A farewell is necessary before you can meet again.  And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.”

“Have you ever read that book?”  She paused for a good two minutes before the question found its way out of her mouth.  She looked completely out of place.  Homeless?  Possible, but somehow doubtful.

Sitting outside the coffee shop at Main and Ashland, I was pausing from my  read of “Illusions” to take a phone call from a dear friend.

She looked like she was from Europe, but she had no accent to match her look.  Conservative, warmly dressed as the winds at this time of year are whipping off the ocean to bite unprepared or unsuspecting passersby.  Maybe a wool skirt, some sort of shawl, and a scarf, all drearily clad in black, save the light (probably faded?) blue scarf around her neck.  I paused from my telephone conversation.

I just bought the book tonight.

“It’s a great book.  It’s true.”  She said the sentences one after the other, but to her there was a distinct difference between the two.  It was both great and true, together and separately, but mostly separately from the way she said it.  “Have you ever read any of his books?”

No.  This is my first experience with Bach.

My friend graciously held her breath in the earpiece as I casually indulged this random woman.  I shifted my feet from the low stone and mortared wall that might only be capable of thwarting a Dachshund’s attempted breach and not much else, to the ground as I leaned onto the white, plastic cafe table in front of me, getting a little closer to this woman.

“Well, it’s good.  And it’s true.  Just don’t let it lead you down a path you don’t want to go down.”  She clung awkwardly to the corner of the brick facade of the coffee shop for a moment before she swept herself inside.

I went back to my friend on the phone.

That was interesting.

We chatted for a few minutes as I recounted precisely what happened.  I watched and narrated to my friend as I watched this woman walk to the counter of the coffee shop, stand, turn in a circle or two, then exit through the other door on the main face of the building.  I was explaining how strange and interesting it all was, when she suddenly appeared again.

Her fingers gripped the corner of the building like “Kilroy“, but at an angle as if there were gale force winds sweeping her off her feet.

“I know I’m just an old woman, but what I told you was wisdom.  You will take it or leave it as you choose.”  And she was gone.

I read a few passages from “Illusions” to the woman I consider to be a part of my heart’s twin before I hung up the phone to allow her to sleep.

How interesting was that little scene?  I was fascinated.  I returned to the book and breezed through the first 80 or 90 pages.  I wanted a beer.  I needed to see Jill.  I didn’t know why, but I did know why too.  Jill was supposed to have this book.  I knew it when I bought it.  And when I bought it, it was one of those magical moments (surprised?) when I didn’t see the book where I thought it should be, but the book called to me and practically jumped off the shelf at me as I was turning away, dejected that it wasn’t there, to leave.

I found Jill where she typically is on a Monday evening, at the pub, behind the counter.  Jill doesn’t know it yet, but she is a pretty good doppelganger for my heart’s twin.  The same heart’s twin to whom I was speaking on my phone when the mystery woman showered me with her unusual blessing.

I ordered a beer and continued to read.  About 35 or 40 minutes later, I read the passage at the beginning of this post for the first time.  My eyes met with Jill’s right before I read it.  I already knew, it’s the biggest part of the reason I go to the pub, but the validation made me avert my eyes in some weird feeling of embarrassment.  Does she know?  It’s hard to know or be certain of such things, but I know what I know.  We have met somewhere in some place in some time and known each other well, but not yet in this time and place.

I finished the book in a couple of hours all told.  Subtract the distractions and the time spent watching Monday Night Football, and the telephone conversation, and it probably took me all of two hours to read.  I set the book down on the bar.

Jill took a step to me.  “I have picked up and shelved this book several times!”

Have you?

“Yeah.”  She said something else, but I didn’t hear it all because my mind was swimming and racing about how she was clearly supposed to have this book.

Do you own it now?

“No.”

Then yes you do.  This is yours.

“Are you sure?”

Completely.  I knew it when I bought it that I would be giving it to you.

Jill didn’t even blink when I said that.  Maybe she hadn’t heard.  Maybe she was ok with that type of thing.  Hard to say, really.  She took the book and placed it on a fax machine that sits next to her POS system.  I continued to field questions about finishing a book in a couple of hours and why I would then give away a book that I had only purchased three hours past.  Jill moved about in her regular fashion attending to those who required her help, paying no attention to those who seemed to be fascinated by my gesture.  I liked that about her.

Jill!  Can I have the book for a moment?  I want to earmark a page for you.

“Sure.”

I found the passage and earmarked it and placed it back on the bar.  Another stranger sauntered up and made a remark of how wonderful the book was.  I was a little surprised at how many people knew the book, quite honestly, but I was enjoying the whole thing too much to dwell on that for too long.  I donned my white “old man” sweater and my knitted charcoal scarf and said goodbye to my new friend from Montreal to my right, to Jason and Jill, and started out the door to my car for the drive home.  I wonder if Jill will understand.  I wonder how much I do.

Ready Or Not, Here I Come…Maybe…

“Wake up…wake up…wake up”, he whispered in what would be seen as a mocking tone by an outsider, but truly held all the hope and dreams and magic of a man lovingly attempting to rouse a child from slumber.

I was bouncing off the walls when I reached Dr. Ken Best‘s office.  I was happy, excited even, to see Ken and experience whatever magic and wonder might await me.  He asked me what was going on today, and like a child with ADD chasing every bell and whistle and light at a  carnival , I quickly spat out ten, or maybe twenty, or perhaps it was a thousand different things that were happening.

It all boiled down to one thing.

I feel stuck.

“Stuck?  How?”

I feel like my spiritual and mental and emotional bodies are flying along at such a great pace, but that my physical body is lagging sorely behind.  Like I want to make my physical world and self the manifestation of my spiritual self, and I haven’t quite figured out how to do that.

(Easy for me to say now.  It took me ten minutes and 157 different verbal angles to get that out for him in that moment.)

I feel like I’m on the precipice of something great, but I have felt like this for a very long time, so I don’t know if I’m on the same precipice or a different one.  I just want to jump off and fly.

“It’s always a different precipice.”

Ken turned out the main overhead lights, leaving just the lamp on in the corner as if to signal this was about to get serious.  I actually prefer it that way; it adds to the magical ambiance.  Then he took me through the usual rigamarole of cracking and twisting and popping.

“Did you read the book?”

Kybalion?  No, but I haven’t gone to look for it yet, either.  I’ll go tonight.  I’m going to the beach, and The Mystery Annex is right there.

“Don’t get it.  I won’t have anything to give you for Christmas.  Besides, I have another book for you.”

Oh?

“Illusions, by Richard Bach.”

Ok.

I gave my neck and head completely to Ken, trusting him with a child-like heart.  This was the first time I had ever given over my neck and head so easily, and the cracking that followed proved as much.

“Life is about jumping off the precipice.  Say it please.”

Life is about jumping off the precipice.

My fingers pulled apart.

“Life is about always being on the precipice.”

Life is about always being on the precipice.

My fingers held.

“I can have enlightenment now.  Say it please.”

I can have enlightenment now.

My fingers almost held together.

“Maaaybe.  Would you like to know that you can have enlightenment now?”

Yes.

We worked through several things all pertaining to my enlightenment and the bringing of my spiritual understanding into the physical world.  I was lying on my back, per usual, with Ken seated to my left working my left ring finger and thumb to mark the truth of the Thetahealing.  Tears filled in as small pools under my closed eyelids before they began to find less and less room until, eventually, they overflowed the negligible space of my sockets and trickled down the sides of my face.

We were finished, or so I thought, and I think Ken probably did too.  Then something happened that had never happened before.

I opened my eyes and Ken was staring directly at me, although it honestly felt more like it was through me.  I met his gaze and did not let go.  Something was happening.  His face began to shape-shift on me as is common when staring at someone or something with a softened focus.  I could see he was experiencing something, seeing something, and I could only dream of having that power (or more accurately, I had not yet fully given over to the belief that I already have that power).

I struggle in those moments to not comment, thinking about how I will write this moment in my blog later on, how it will sound or what approach to take, and a hundred different other things before I stop myself and realize I need to just be in the moment.

Somehow the magic was lost on me as I wrestled with my brain to be quiet and still.  I could see in Ken’s face that whatever had been happening was over.  I sat up slowly as Ken moved around behind me to wipe the table with a sterilized wet-wipe of some kind.

“Wake up…wake up…wake up.”

The words hung in the air like ghosts haunting me.  I moved to a chair next to Ken’s desk to put on my shoes, and suddenly I was overcome and began to cry.  It was slow at first, but wave after wave after wave crashed over me, and I could no longer hold it back.

I don’t know when it happened, but Ken was sitting on the table directly across from me.  If I hadn’t been in his office, I would have forgotten all my dignity and I would have cried aloud in my sobs.

I must be strong.

“Don’t fight it.  Walk into it.”

It was another moment when I wanted to be freaked out by Ken seemingly reading my mind, but I apparently have become accustomed to such things with him, and instead, I only allowed myself to go deeper.

Ken allowed me my space.

I have been hiding.

“Yes.”  It was neither a confirmation or a question.  It was an invitation to expand.

I know who I am.  I know what I’m supposed to do.  I know what I can become, and, yet, I have been hiding.  I’m so tired of hiding, Ken.

His next client arrived.  I had to pull it all back together and walk out now.  I did my best.

Bad Dog! Bad Blogger? Maybe Both…

So, no, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth.  It feels like that sometimes, though, I have to be honest.  I honestly didn’t expect so much fallout from not having written for a week or more, but here we are, and I must say, thank you to all of you, as I am extremely grateful that enough of you actually read this and care about it.  So, people keep asking, “where have you been?”  Lots of places, both real and more other-worldly.

Ken went on vacation and asked me to housesit for him.  Housesitting is ok, for the most part, but this entailed 4 birds, 2 cats and an old-enough-to-know-better, but still-too-young-to-care French Bulldog puppy.

The animals were an adventure all unto themselves.  I have never dealt with birds before, but they were surprisingly easy.  Not one peck or bite attempt the whole week.  Cats take care of themselves for the most part, and these two are the most amazing acrobats I have ever seen in feline form.  Oh, but that dog!  And, to keep it extremely interesting, I have to think that the entire animal kingdom of that house conspired against me at least for one night.

It was Saturday night.  I was foolish enough to believe that I could sleep in on Sunday morning, so I was up until about 1:30am.  Falling asleep on the couch, I awoke from my grogginess to the smell of something foul emanating from the kitchen area.  That dog!  I was only out for a few minutes!  Thanks for the present.  After corralling the dog, I decided he should stay in the office so I could actually get some sleep that night.  It was a good plan, or so I thought.  I didn’t expect the cats to be a part of the proposed jailbreak cum torture-the-human plan.  After lying down around 2am, I was awakened by a cat jumping off something as of yet undetermined, but most likely the chifforobe, onto my stomach.  It was 5am.

I went the washroom (that’s for my Canadian friends), and I decided the dog had clearly learned his lesson.  I released him from his containment, and I allowed him onto the bed ready to sleep the better part of the morning away.  He was acting a little weird.  I told him as much, but, alas, it was to no avail.  I pushed him aside and pulled the sheets back up under my chin, and I rolled over onto my side.  Wet!  What the – ?

That dog!  He peed all over the bed.  I jumped up and turned on the lights.  Sure enough, there it was.  The body pillow was soaked.  The sheets had spots in a spray pattern that would make CSI wonder how the hell that could happen.  Back in the office you go, my friend.

After throwing all I could into the washing machine, I decided to lie down on the couch and follow through with my plan of sleeping in.  By now, the sun was peaking through, and the birds thought I should have a trumpeted morning tribute fit for a king.  Thanks, birds.  I could handle that, actually.  I have some strange ability to block out the cacophony of the world when I really want to sleep, which would have been great, but for those cats!

The little cat decided that it was an easy like Sunday morning kind of morning and this was the morning for loving me.  Lying on the couch, the little cat sat on my head.  Not by my head, not around my head, not even in extremely close proximity to my head, but ON my head.  I brushed her off probably 10 times, and of those probable 10 times, she walked around the couch, and promptly sat again on my head.  I love you too, kitty.

It was useless to try to go back to sleep.  I walked to the corner to get coffee and read.  Needless to say, I was pretty much useless the rest of the day.  The wizard was messing with me, testing me now through his animals.  At least that is how it seemed to me.

They wore me out.  By the time Ken came back, I was a wreck.  Stressed, exhausted and at my wits end.  Ken laughed and laughed on the ride home from the airport as I recounted the week with his beasts.  I can’t blame him.  I laughed too.  It was, after all, pretty funny.  Well, it would have been if it had happened to someone else.

I don’t really know what the point of that whole story was, but if I did know, I would have to say, patience, sometimes the best laid plans go to waste and you better be ready to roll with it, and maybe the realization that sometimes I have to get broken physically to have a spiritual experience.  All in no particular order.

I had my first lucid dream on Wednesday, the night before Ken arrived back home.  I may not have had it if I wasn’t at the end of my physical energy rope.  I also cheated on Ken while he was gone.  I had my first cranio-sacral session with another magician named Rob.  Maybe the combination of the tired, the magic of Ken and the magic of Rob, the animals, the energy of the wizard’s home, all of it came together to give me that experience of lucid dreaming.  Now I know I can do it again.

Oh! I have so much to share with you all.  If you can see fit to forgive my negligence in the writing, I promise, I’ll see if I can remember it all.