Right Here, Right Now

The Universe keeps sending me little signs and messages, letting me know that I am in the right place, on the right path, doing the right thing.

It is such a gift because I feel so confused and disjointed lately. My ego is having fits while I’m trying to let Spirit take the lead. It’s not excited about the idea of being leashed and obedient, to letting go of the illusion of control.

I don’t want to lead. I want to simply do as Spirit says. Crazy how something so simple is so difficult to do, much less maintain. I’ve started writing a stream of consciousness page or two in the mornings to help me identify the ego’s ridiculous lies and tricks.

I want to let go and let the Universe hold me while I close my ego’s eyes to the world and truly rest.

Tee hee. Being silly is very important to keeping the ego in check. I have learned recently to take being silly seriously… in that I need to honor it and make time in my life for it.

Coming Out

I started this blog far away from my “normal” blog a long time ago so I could keep this stuff hidden should I so desire. I finally got sick of pretending not to be myself and “came out” spiritually on it today.

Very freeing and another local blogger even stopped by my work to give me crystals (that’s me with them above) a relative of hers finds all over in Arkansas! It was a beautiful confirmation that I’m doing the right thing by not being afraid of who I am.

It is utterly delightful.

Hafiz’s Gift

I’ve been feeling very tired, emotionally drained and unsupported lately. But something that has been bringing me comfort and moments of joy is The Gift, a book of poetry by the Sufi Master Hafiz. I tend to write down inspiring or touching things that I read. The selections below are all handwritten into my journal; all are taken from The Gift, some are full poems and some just fragments:

We Have Not Come to Take Prisoners

We have not come here to take prisoners
But to surrender ever more deeply
To freedom and joy.

We have not come into this exquisite world
To hold ourselves hostage from love.

Run, my dear
From anything
That may not strengthen
Your precious budding wings.

Run like hell my dear,
From anyone likely
To put a sharp knife
Into the sacred, tender vision
Of your beautiful heart.

…

For we have not come here to take prisoners
Or to confine our wondrous spirits,

But to experience ever and more deeply
Our divine courage, freedom, and LIGHT!

Even
After
All this time
The sun never says to the earth,

“You owe
Me.”

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the
Whole
Sky.

Like
A pair
Of mismatched newlyweds
One of whom still feels very insecure,
I keep turning to God
Saying,
“Kiss
Me.”

When all your desires are distilled
You will cast just two votes:

To love more,
And be happy.

I know the ectasy of your heart’s wings
When they make love against the Sky.

Something divine happens to the
Heart

That
Shapes the hand and tongue
And eye into
The world
Love.

I cannot sit still with my countrymen in chains.
I cannot act mute
Hearing the world’s loneliness
Crying near the Beloved’s heart.

Love Is the Funeral Pyre

Love is
The funeral pyre
Where I have laid my living body.

All the false notions of myself
That once caused fear, pain,

Have turned to ash
As I neared God.

What has risen
From the tangled web of thought and sinew

Now shines with jubilation
Through the eyes of angels

And screams from the guts of
Infinite existence
Itself.

Love is the funeral pyre
Where the heart must lay
Its body.

Your love
Should never be offered to the mouth of a
Stranger,

Only to someone
Who has the valor and daring
To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife

Then weave them into a blanket
To protect you.

The Vintage Man

The
Difference
Between a good artist
And a great one

Is:

The novice
Will often lay down his tool
Or brush

Then pick up an invisible club
On the mind’s table

And helplessly smash the easels and
Jade.

Whereas the vintage man
No longer hurts himself or anyone

And keeps on
Sculpting
Light.

Indeed God
Has written a thousand promises
All over your heart

That say,
Life, life, life
Is far to sacred to
Ever end.

Spirituality and Roses

When I was growing up, I lived most of my life in a house where two rose bushes thrived despite how we ignored or over-trimmed them. They seemed invincible and were a constant source of beauty in a yard that would go otherwise completely yellow during the heat of much of the year. I admired their hardiness and constant beauty and the amazing smell that just poured off of them – unlike any other roses I’ve met in my life. I read about rose water and loved the idea, but all my attempts to make some (okay, my one attempt) didn’t work and I forgot about it. But roses still felt magical to me.

***

Much, much later, my uncle told me a story about when he was a teen and had developed a spiritual & vaguely romantic relationship with a much older woman who had a special type of rose oil. It had been made in India back when the Raj was producing these as gifts for the foreigners who visited and contained the pressed oil of one thousand roses. She pressed a small drop to his third eye and it began to vibrate and for a while he saw everything he looked at as if it was covered in gold leaf.

***

Recently, I was in a Wild Oats that had been turned into a Whole Foods and so was carrying new products. One of these was rose water. I was giddy about finding it and snatched up the biggest bottle they had (although next time I may opt for a smaller bottle made with ionized water instead) and have been using it once or twice a day ever since. I mist it over myself and smell the beautiful, gentle hint of roses that smells like home to me. It reminds me to breathe deeply and to  center myself and that I am, as my boyfriend’s mother said the other day, “a beautiful flower.”

I’m trying to imagine myself as a rose: showing my beauty and splendor to whomever passes, regardless of who they are or what they say to me.

The image at the top is one of my recent drawings. Click here to view more.

Corageous Souls, Life Challenges

I recently found via Twitter, a website about a recent book called Corageous Souls, which is about the decisions we make about how our lives will be before we are reborn. While the book is interesting in itself, I am personally more interested in the second book author Robert Schwartz is planning.  He is looking for people who have gone through one or more of the following:

• Abortion
• Poverty or great financial reversal
• Divorce
• Growing up in a dysfunctional family
• An abusive romantic relationship
• Immigrating to the US and facing hardship after arrival
• Some form of betrayal by a loved one or friend

If you want to share your story with him and possibly work with some mediums to discover your “pre-birth plan” as he puts it, email Robert at CourageousSouls AT yahoo DOT com.

You can also download the first two chapters of Corageous Souls here.

Hidden Messages In Water

I recently picked up Masaru Emoto’s book The Hidden Messages in Water and it is blowing my mind.  Emoto experimented with exposing frozen water to different words and music and discovered that water crystals form in response to whatever the water was exposed to.  He goes on to discuss how water influences our evolution, how it is part of the vibrational resonance of everything and more.  It’s leading me to believe that our collective un/conscious is located in water.  I really highly recommend picking this up.  (All the images in this post are from the book.)

Here’s an excerpt to get you interested:

“When water freezes, the particles of water link together to form the crystal nucleus, and when the nucleus grows in a stable way into a hexagonal shape, a visible water crystal appears; but when information in conflict with nature is present, an incomplete crystal will be formed.

“The words ‘gratitude’ and ‘love’ form the fundamental principles of the laws of nature and the phenomenon of life.  Therefore, water in its natural form is required to create the hexagonal form.  By contrast, words such as “You fool” do not exist in nature and are instead unnatural elements created by people. Words that revile, harm and ridicule are the result of the culture created by humans.

“It’s likely that only vibrations of love and gratitude appear in nature, and observation of nature shows this to be true. The trees and plants show respect for each other by the way they live in harmony.  This also applies to the animal kingdom. Even lions only kill when hungry, and never at random. The plants in the shadows of the trees do not complain, and the animals do not try to take more food than they require.

“In an article in the March-April 1989 issue of the American scientific journal 21st Century Science and Technology, Warren J. Hamerman wrote that the organic matter that forms human beings generates a requency that can be represented by a sound at approximately fourty-two octaves above middle C (the note near the center of the piano keyboard). The modern standard for Middle C is approximately 262 Hz (Hertz) so this means that the sound reaches roughly 570 trillion HZ. Since Hz means vibrations per second, this indicates that human beings vibrate 570 trillion times a second, a number that exceeds the imagination and indicates incredible and wonderful hidden potential.

“It’s difficult to conceive 42 octaves, but just realize that the frequency of the human being is immensely diverse and unparalleled.  The human being holds a universe within, filled with overlapping frequencies, and the result is a symphony of cosmic proportions.

“When I talk to people about vibration and fequency, I use what I like to call the “do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti theory.” This simple theory just means that the frequency of everything in the cosmos can be summarized in seven parts – do, re, mi, fa, so, la, and ti.

“The universe consists of an uncountable number of things ranging from the lowest to the highest frequency.  It might help to imagine keys aligned in order on a piano keyboard, starting from the lowest sound.  If you press down on the white keys, you will hit do, re, mi, fa, so, la and ti.  When you move up the keyboard one octave, from one do to the next, the frequency doubles.  In other words, the doubling frequencies divided into seven parts is do, re, mi, fa, so, la, and ti.  Therefore the repeating of these seven sounds expresses all sound from the lowest to the highest.

“But what enlightenment can be obtrained by seeing frequency as sound?

“The most important revelation is that of resonance.  Sounds of the same requency resonate. This can be understood by making use of a turning fork, a Y-shaped instrument used to tune the pitch of an instrument or voice.

“When a turning fork is hit with a rubber hammer, creating a la sound, and a singer responds with a la, the tuning fork and the voice create a single frequency sound wave. This is called resonance. When one side creates a fequency and the other responds with the same sound, they resonate. It’s said that likes attract and so it would appear that vibrations attract and interact with each other.

“With some careful obsevation, you’ll see that this same phenomenon is going on al laround you.  A dog walking along the street may not respond to another animals it passes but it will be very responsive to a dog on the other side of the street. Dogs will  often howl when they hear the sound of a siren and this could also be a type of resonance.

“And we see this in human relationships: people who generate similar frequencies are attracted to each other, resulting in friendship. Certain people remain uninterested in each other, no matter how physically close they may be.  However, if someone you don’t like approaches you and you react, this also means that you are resonating in some way with that person.

“The greatest secret of Japanese martial arts is referred to as ‘winning without fighting.’ This essentially means avoiding resonating with the enemy. To fight and win results in resonance with the enemy and so the level of the relationship is very low.

“When frequencies are fundamentally incompatable, they cannot resonate.  We cannot accept what is fundamentally different from us.

“Howver, an interesting fact is that resonance can result even when frequencies are not identical.  This happens, for instance, when the frequency is doubled.  Playing the la key on the piano at 440 Hz and the la key at an octave lower at 220 Hz creates quite a pleasant resonating sound, and responding to a tuning fork with a sound one octave lower also creates nice resonance.

“When the frequency difference is twofold, fourfold, eightfold and so on – or one-half, one-quarter, and so on – the result is resonance. The principle of this relationships extends to infinity. No matter how distant the frequencies, resonance will result if one of the two numbers is a multiple of the other. We can also say that for every sound on each level there is a resonating sound on every other level.

…

“Most of the objects found in nature emit stable frequencies. Each sparrow sounds basically the same (though sparrows themselves might recognize slight differences), and the sounds made by dogs or cats do not havce a great deal of variation. By contrast, the human being is able to make full use of the do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti scale to create beautiful meoldies.  Wouldn’t you agree that this is indeed a marvelous ability?

“Humans are the only creatures that have the capacity to resonate with all other creatues and objects found in nature. We can speak with all that exists in the universe. We can give out energy and also receive energy in return. However, this iability is a two-edged sword. When people act out only on their own greed, they emit an energy that serves to destroy the harmony within nature.

“The defiling of our earth is the result of an unrelenting hunger for convenience and the fulfillment of greed, initiated by the industrial revolution. This has led to lifestyles of mass consumption that seriously threaten the global environment.

“We have embarked on a new century, a time in history when we must make srious changes in the way that we think. Only the human can resonate with the rest of the world and this is why it is so essential that we change our thinking, so we can live in harmony with nature and not go on destroying the earth. What vibration we give to the earth and what kind of planet we create depends on each one of us as individuals.

“How will you choose to live your life?

“If you fill your heart with love and gratitude, you will find yourself surrounded by so much that you can love and that yo ucan feel grateful for, and you can even get closer to enjoying the life of health and happiness that you seek. But what will happen if you emit signals of hate, dissatisfaction and sadness? Then you will probably find yourself in a situation that makes you hateful, dissatisfied and sad.

“The life you life and the world you live in are up to you.”

As Above So Below

It never ceases to amaze me how similar the most dissimilar things truly are.  In everything that is unfamiliar I truly believe we can find a piece of ourselves.

Seeing Fairies

Usually when I want to “see” spiritual or energetic stuff, I have to “look” with a different part of my brain/eyes – I can’t really explain it, but it’s why I don’t walk around scanning people’s energy automatically or anything like that (which is very rude to do on purpose without permission).  But sometimes energetic bodies are strong enough to burst right into my “normal” field of vision.

That’s what happened the first time my “powers” were activiated, because I was suddenly confronted with hundreds of ghosts/black figures intending ill will towards myself and my friends.  It happens sometimes off and on, depending on my emotional state and the powers around me.

Lately I’ve been seeing what I can only imagine as fairies in my apartment.  It’s interesting because after my boyfriend and I named our apartment “The Treetops,” I drew a welcome sign with tree tops, squirrels, birds and fairies in it.  Since then I’ve noticed that I’ve been strongly compelled to bring bird imagery into our home and I’ve also been seeing the fairies.

I see them as swarms of tiny glinting lights that move through rooms and swirl around me before moving on.  It’s all very playful and sweet and comforting.  It’s so encouraging and amazing to see the things I have been  calling into my life manifest themselves.  And I feel very blessed to have the fey scampering around my apartment.

Harmonizing with Electronics

I love technology in general, but tend not to get too excited about it specifically (except for power tools).  I’ve been intrigued by people who feel connected to electronic gizmos the way I do about plants, but it’s not something I’ve really accessed.

But lately since I’ve been learning bits and pieces more about numerology and read about how even digital clock readouts can be sending messages to us, I’ve been paying more attention.  For instance, for the past month or so I’ve noticed that nearly everytime I felt strangely compelled to look at a digital clock, the time was almost always something like 10:10 or 11:11.  It was intrigued and it felt like a message, but I had to wait and let it sit with me for a few weeks before I understood what the message was.  Simply put, the clocks were telling me that everything is in balance in my life and the Universe at large and to take comfort in that.

It seems so strange and sweet that clocks are taking the time (ha ha) to communicate this message to me.  I love it and was surprised to find that another electronic, my cell phone, is also now, apparently, working to  care for and comfort me.

I was on the phone last night when I received another call that my phone simply would not let me switch over to answer.  At the time I was very frustrated, thinking that it might be from someone I had just seen who had talked about coming over to hang out, but I didn’t want to end my other conversation so I just stayed on and waited for the unknown caller to leave a message.

After ending my conversation, I called the voicemail and discovered that the mysterious caller was a man I had met about a week and a half ago now at a public event.  He had invited myself and 2 other friends of mine to his place afterwards and we had a fine time except that he seemed way too interested in me, especially since I kept talking about my boyfriend and how much I love him, etc. etc.

The next day, thinking it over I had really bad feeling in my gut that told me not to trust him.  He had my email because we had planned before that to have him teach me a meditation in exchange for an artwork I gave him and he had emailed me twice the next day, trying to get me to come over to his place ASAP and sending me a very inappropriate poem about “pagan sexuality” that was all about the “fire in his loins” and other really creepy shit.

I blew him off, saying I was too busy and assumed I’d keep doing it but then he sent me yet another, even longer, more disgusting poem about “spiritual sexuality” that was simply an attempt to coerce me to have sex with him.  By the way, I should mention that he is very like several other men I have known who use their spiritual powers for evil (i.e. to take advantage of other empathic, sensitive people) and I refuse to let people like that use me anymore.  I blocked his email then without a reply.

The next day he found me on MySpace so I blocked him there as well and sent a note to my friend who ran the event I met him at, telling her about how creepy and predatory he is.  Turns out he’d sent the first poem to her other friend and then had abandoned trying to get into her pants once she stopped responding to him.  I assumed and hoped he’d do the same for me, until I heard that voicemail and I completely freaked out.

He did not and should not have my phone number and I don’t know where or how he got a hold of it, but I am so glad that my phone refused to let me answer.  As horrifying and terrifying as it was to simply hear part of the voicemail, I can’t imagine how much more shaken up I would feel if I actually talked to him.

So it’s lovely to have even the electronics in my life vibrating on a positive level with me.  I’m glad I have such support.

Love Finds You Even When You’ve Given It Up

Say what you will,
Love finds you even when,
You’ve given it up

One after another
You’ve seen love affairs turn
From the glorious start
To the crash and burn
But Now that you’ve promised never again
It’s exactly when you’ll fall in

-The Submarines, “Submarine Symphonica”

I posted before about my lovelife and how I decided to give up on having a relationship with a woman.  In my heart I knew it wouldn’t be forever, but I knew it was a decision I had to make so I wouldn’t be throwing away my energy after looking for someone when I shouldn’t be.

I’m happy to announce that the Universe indeed had plans for me where that is concerned.  I recently went to visit the only woman I ever felt truly intimate and comfortable with.  She lives several states away and we hadn’t seen each other for 3 years.

Coming together with her again was incredible.  We connected even more deeply that we had before and it was so comforting to me to be around another woman and feel as deeply relaxed as I want to, but normally don’t.  Our intimacy and obvious mutual adoration is also fuel for my fire and it made a significant difference in my energy and power level.

Since then, we’ve been talking daily on the phone, sometimes two or three times.  It overjoys me to have a female precense in my life that I can be that involved with without them finding it stifling.  I have always wanted to be intimate with a woman who was willing to be involved in all aspects of my life, finding even the boring things interesting because of how they affect me, listening to stuff I wouldn’t feel comfortable telling anyone else.

The natural progression of our feelings and desires have led us to being each other’s girlfriends, with the overwhelming and enthusiastic support of both of our signficant others.  It is an amazing connection that I thought I had lost and to have it suddenly back as a force for wonder and love in my life is almost overwhelming.  I am so grateful to have this beautiful woman in my life, even from far away.