Archive for

koi in summer shadows

trust..

I need to pay more attention to the gentle reminders in life, then  I won’t have to deal with the not-so-gentle ones.

Lesson I learned in an evening…trust myself.

I often second guess myself.  Perhaps I am easily influenced by the opinions of others; maybe I just want want some reassurance.  If I am patient though, that reassurance comes not from the lips of others, but from my own life. I am happy, able to handle stressful situations, feel creative, find balance between work and play…these are the signposts I need to recognize.  And when appropriate, I need to give myself some credit.

Last night I looked outside myself for what is innately in me, in each of us.  What I found instead, or what I carried away, was the weight of that need, not just my own, but others.  Love isn’t painful.  Need is.. expectation is. No one is the gatekeeper for Universal Love.  No one. There is no scale which measures the worth of our actions and our lives then calculates the exact portion of Love due to us. Universal Love is measureless…there is more than enough…so much more. I need only let go of the limits of my mind and my need to make sense of what I cannot entirely grasp.  Instead I will follow no path, and look no further, I must only give up the effort.

falling and rising

Giving Thanks

RJ’s home
phone call with Devoney

a question…

what are we doing for the now?

the teacher

This past month I have begun my training to be a yoga teacher.  It is an eight month process and it is both harder and better than I had imagined.  As the program is run by an Ashram here in Portland, the question has arisen about the role of a guru.  Some feel the role of a guru is imposing, others feel he is a guide.  I am not sure what I feel.

What I do know is this.  There are others whose spiritual practices I respect and admire.  I wish my own practice were “better.”  I have trusted others too much in the past with my practice and have been hurt.  I have also grown because of it.  I have discovered that striving for spiritual enlightenment is not the way for me. I am on a journey of self discovery and feel the need to explore myself without the insight of others as a primary method for doing so.

There are moments everyday that I learn.  Everyone is teacher.  But I am no longer striving for some far away goal.  My goal is everyday..moment to moment.. Be here, appreciate, be kind, connect, create some beauty along the way…If I can live that with myself and others I have attained all I want.

tango…

new venue..old friends, new friends…lovely evening…

home

Last night it rained hard and long…I have yet to put up my storm windows and my old single panes rattled steadily throughout the night. When I first moved this house two years ago, the sound of the shaking windows scared my dog Luka so that she would bark most of the night. Now she has gotten used to the sounds of this house…and there are many. I have gotten used to them too.

buttons

I keep an old tin filled with buttons I have collected over many years. Some of them in fact I gathered from my grandmother’s basement. It is rare that I ever use them. Maybe once every two years I find the need and the time to search out an adequate replacement and sew it on to a garment I just have to wear. I keep the buttons not for the rare opportunity to use them…I keep them because they are beautiful. I keep them because they remind me of my grandmother. I keep them because I believe each of them holds a story…and although it is true I will never know these stories, I like the idea that I have made a home for them.

Art 112

I am struggling in my art class to find a subject for my latest project. I am to make the ordinary ..extraordinary..elevate the banal to art. It should be easy enough. I live this way. Every moment in my life is wrought with symbolism and meaning. I make a ritual out of choosing the cup I will drink my morning coffee out of. I find beauty in simplest of things..and feel the world as a remarkably magical place. So why I am having such a hard time with this.