Bliss and Drumming

A realization lately. I have been asking a lot.

Throughout my life, even in times I was sure there wasn’t anything I was speaking with, I have spoken to source. I sent wishes for someone’s healing or blew out a candle or prayed, whatever we call those moments when we speak to something larger outside of ourselves. It has occurred to me that in these moments, I have always been asking. Asking for friends and family to be well or to recover. Asking for my finances to straighten out. Asking for whatever is coming next to arrive in the way I would most like.

May the frightening thing in the news not come to pass. May those people find relief from suffering. May the show be successful, or the friend find her way, or the family be safe and happy.

We map out how we want it all to look, and we have a picture of the outcome. We create this picture based on the past, and it is through fear we speak. Fear of not having enough, fear of it not working out in the way we vision, fear of pain or sorrow, fear of change. I think I am supposed to know what the future is to look like. So I ask and ask and ask. Continue reading “About Time for Thanks”

A Bodhisattva is a being who is able to reach nirvana, but defers this in order to stick around to help suffering beings on their path. The Bodhisattvas promise to practice the six perfections of giving, moral discipline, patience, effort, concentration and wisdom in order to fulfill their aim of attaining buddhahood for the sake of all beings.[1]

It has been a month of traveling, with the restrictions lifting and the vaccination in order. Two weeks in Southern California with my family, a week in New York with my dear mentor and friends, and to Nebraska for more visiting.

Airports have lost their charm, at least for the time being. It seems as if everyone is discombobulated. Humans have forgotten their easy flow of being, and there is a kind of uptight scrabbling and agitation that sets everything on edge. People have been cooped up in their own spaces, getting their demands met in every moment, and I guess they’ve forgotten how to comport themselves with strangers. Not every impulse gets met immediately when you’re outside of your household, and people seem to have forgotten this as they bully their way to the counter or cut everyone off in traffic. Continue reading “The Scrabble to Get There”

With the anniversary of lockdown, I imagine many of us are looking back at the past year. I remember that first foggy morning, gazing into the city and listening to a kind of stillness I had never heard here before. It seems both like yesterday and forever ago.

For many people, the opportunity of this year was in having time to look closely at our patterns. The distraction of our social lives went away, and the way we truly live came into clear focus.

Continue reading “The Question of Not Enough”

I am gratefully a good sleeper, but now and then comes a night when things are out of whack. This time, I blame it on choosing Bonnie and Clyde, the 1967 Faye Dunaway version, for the Sunday night movie.

For me, for many, this was the best era of movies, between 1967 and 1976. I hadn’t seen this one in a long time, and just gazing at Dunaway alone is worth the price of admission. I forgot how gruesome the end of the movie was though, and the energy of the mayhem woke me up from dreams. I am pretty diligent about what goes into my brain, violence-wise, for just this reason. Continue reading “All is Well”

I worked in a restaurant in Chelsea long ago, a wine bar on 7^th Avenue in New York City. It was a small place with three levels. There were some tables upstairs, overlooking the main bar area. Downstairs was the kitchen, and there was a room with a fireplace and sofas and tables close together.

It was cushy and comfortable in that room. With the wine flowing and the warmth from the fireplace, things got quite rowdy down there, especially on late weekend nights. I wore steel-toed motorcycle boots, running up and down those stairs all night long with those heavy shoes. At the time, this was my idea of fitness. If I ever need a hip replacement, I will blame it on those years and those shoes. Continue reading “Choosing Magic”

I fell into a hole for a few days. The San Francisco air quality had been such that when the pug and I went outside for our daily peramble, he sneezed for the whole walk, and I came home headachy. My own struggle was a constant reminder of the devastation happening close by. Friends were evacuating their homes. The gut-wrenching destruction of fires haunted me, the lives lost, the trees and plants, the animals. I hooked into the heavy feeling and dug in.

The wildfires affected many places from my history. I have driven from San Francisco to Washington so many times I can see nearly each mile in my mind, my aching delight in the vast beauty of forest always very present as I wind through. Okanagan County Washington, where I picked apples for 6 weeks, long ago. Santa Cruz, where I went to college. Vacaville, Oroville, spots on the “places I’ve played” list. Continue reading “Pocketful of Stars”

The drum begins. I begin my journey on a bluff, overlooking the Pacific. Rolling grassy hills, the coastline rippling side to side, and the big birds delighting in the marine updraft. There is an opening to a cave there, to my left. The first time I entered this cave, a wave of fear washed over me because it was so dark. Then I remembered: this is my shamanic journey! Turn on the light! And light flooded in from above, highlighting the massive space. A soft dirt floor, ferns and the distant sound of water. A lower world where everyone I meet has my best interest at heart.

For a couple of years, culminating in the past few months of the quarantine, I have been studying Shamanic Counseling with the teacher Isa Gucciardi. This path is a surprise in my life, and yet I also feel as though I’ve been making my way here the whole time.

Continue reading “The First Trance”

As a person matures, he develops a sense of self. The more aware of himself he becomes, paradoxical as this may seem, the more concerned with others he must become. Just think of this great spiritual truth, my friends: lack of selfhood means self-centeredness. Full selfhood means concern for others, fairness in evaluating advantages and disadvantages of others and self. It does not mean annihilation of self for the sake of others in a distorted sense of martyrdom. But it does imply a sense of fairness in which one is capable of forgoing an advantage if it creates undue pain or unfair disadvantage for another. Pathwork Guide Lecture 120, Eva Pierrakos

For the most part, the past week of quarantine has looked much the same as it has for the past couple of months. The preponderance of birds, riotous flower bloomings, quiet streets. Then, a warm spell in San Francisco sending folks out to the parks.

Overnight, it seems that facemasks have become obsolete, and big drunken parties of young people fill the grass. I don’t enter the park most days now, and walk Henry elsewhere. After months of lockdown, I can’t help but seeing that block-square grass patch as a big petri dish.

Continue reading “Better, You and Me”

It was funny, really, and later it brought to mind the article we had both read about the spike in divorce rates after the quarantine was lifted in China.

We had to venture out to the laundry. Harsh words were spoken after perceived carelessness. Then, escalation after a reconnaissance to the grocery.

Continue reading “Arguing About Death in a Laundromat”