That's what Tara has as her nickname or whatever they call it.  You know how we take names like "Light Healer" or "Lite Beer" or even "Wildly Gentle" (no doubt a good slogan for an outcall massage business, but don't tell anybody).  But she calls (if she still does) herself "I dunno" and I really, really think that's funny.  It's a kick in the pants, and the thought of it has more than once brought a smile to my face.

When was my last journal entry, anyway?  A week ago?  2 weeks?  I dunno. 

Ok, here goes:  My body (especially my back) hurts, my eyes are almost always swollen almost shut, and I'm just sad.  I feel sad half the time, like I want to cry, but there's nothing to cry about.  I actually am very lucky, my kids are doing good, my husband is alive, my bills are getting paid (by me), and I have a great, wonderful, exciting, challenging job. 

So, anyway, I'm back, but don't know how long I've even been gone.  I cooked a wonderful dinner tonight, and Mike called it "shit," and I said, "It's not shit."  It really wasn't.  It was authentic Middle Eastern food, and it was really good. 

So, OK, you could say I'm angry, too.  Just angry.  For me and for everybody in the world who works along and does a beautiful job, and then some asshole comes along and says, "What you're doing is shit."  And the funny thing is, THEY aren't even doing anything constructive.  And sometimes they are doing DEstructive things, and tearing everything apart.  Like the financial markets, for example.  Those markets that we were all too "uninformed" to understand. 

Oh dear.  This paragraph is an apology to that lovely spirit who reads my blogs from time to time, and doesn't want me to write "from anger."  Although, I do get angry about a lot of things, and I don't mean to hurt anyone.

I suppose I'm trying to feel better, to "blow off steam" as they say.  Or, to be honest, I just want to--or NEED to-- feel sorry for myself right now.  Sigh.

I guess where I'm going with this is that I've done my best, made every effort, and still find myself, from time to time, sitting at the bottom of a dry well. 

I was in a funk today (see my earlier blog of today if you want) and when I saw this question I grouched, "I don't know ANYBODY who is SANE.  What IS "sane" anyway?"  Then I thought about Danita.  She is sane.  Then I remembered that I was going to post an update on her today, and not just post a blog where I complain and feel sorry for myself.  So, here's an update about Danita--

Still under medical care in a facility, she asks why every morning she must awaken in a place that has a culture of illness ("We're all sick here.") rather than a culture of wellness (We all give thanks and heal here!)  Every morning she realizes that it is her choice to create a culture of healing around her, so she does.  The other day, she was out in the courtyard playing her drum, and teaching a woman who is 48 years old and has cerebral palsy to play the drum.  The woman she was teaching is in love with someone her family disapproves of, and she was telling Danita of how she loves this person and wants to be with him, but her family treats her like a child.  An 82 year old woman was sitting by them in the courtyard.  She got up and walked over to them.  She took the student drummer's face in her hands and gazed gently into her eyes.  She said, "Please forgive me for overhearing your conversation, but I feel I really must speak to you.  I have been the pastor of (such-and-such) church for many years, and I want to tell you to follow your heart."  All three of them were drumming together after that.  They drummed a rhythm about how God loves them. 

Well, I'll be honest with ya, and I'll say this only once, I think.  I can, from time to time, be in some terrible pain, 'cause, you see, my husband is really, really not healthy and that affects the mind and spirit as well as the body and it's really, really difficult

to live with someone who is hurtin' hurtin' hurtin.  There's just no fun there, you know, like livin' in a dark hole. 

That's why, you see. 

But it's not.

If I blame something outside myself for how I feel, that is shirking my essential responsibility for being whole. 

I'm also capable of letting the beautiful Light of Spirit break through and shine, shine, shine through my heart, life, laughter, connection, work, living, dancing, loving.  There is nothing real other than that.  I mean really real.

Of course, sometimes I'm angry and I mean really pissed.  I mean like being in tears pissed. 

Ironically, I'm one of the happiest people I know.  Balanced, capable, open-hearted, able to use the Light that sustains my energy in ways that sustain and empower others. 

But, you know, there is this picture of Mike when he was two, and his arms are open like he wants to hug you, and his hands are out like he's receiving Divine energy, and his beautiful little face is Beaming with Love and Joy!   Oh, I am SO in LOVE with that little boy!  I met him, I knew him, he is the father of my chldren.  Did the Devil take him away?  Where did he go?  How can I find him?  Is he being tortured?  Is he being hurt?  Am I letting this happen?  When can he go free? 

Why do people choose to do mean things, when they could do fun things?  The way I see it, being nice fills me with sparkly happiness, and being mean hurts.  It hurts me and others, too.  Being nice is WAY more fun!  Why can't we just love and play and hug?  If people are angry or need something, we can do our best to heal them and help them.  Eveything is SO beautiful in the shape that the Universe, in its wisdom, created it.  Let's share that together.  Why not?   I mean, really.  I'm serious.

I thought about what this question might mean, because my natural response was, "Oh, well EVERYTHING!" but, even though that is true, and may ultimately be the answer my consciousness falls in love with over and over again (and don't you love it, like a dance where you have the joy of doing the same step over and over again with your beloved friends and inside a Well and happy body)... OK, I Promise to stick to the subject.  Like glue.  So I decided that perhaps a little precision and discernment were called for as, for example, toe nail fungus isn't at the top of the Eternal List, even though no doubt we can learn a lot from that biological phenom.

The Eternal List of Inspiration-related Things miiiiiiight be hierarchical-- or not.  Who knows?  Oo!  Oo!  I Do!  It's a mobius strip!  It's a mobius strip! 

But what happens if you fall of the side edges?  Is that depression? 

I went looking for mobius strip images and found this one on evilmadscientist.com.  This one is EXCELLENT because it's made out of sugar, and suggests that one could even make a fruitcake mobius strip.  Oh Ecstasy!!!!  :)    Here's what the sculptors had to say about their creation:  "The shape is a 3/4 twist mobius strip with a square cross section and windows cut at regular intervals in all of the sides the side. Even though it's hollow, it still weighs seven pounds and fourteen ounces-- that's a lot of sugar." 

But anyway, that's just the SHAPE of the list of things that inspire me, and what would be on the list? 


No, not ants.

Probably searching for justice.  Anybody who is searching for justice.  True justice.  Not revenge.  Not Vengeance.  Not punishment, but justice.  Like, restorative justice, rebalancing, making whole, enfusing with spirit and hope, beauty.  Anyone who is involved in such a quest--which is most of us, whether we're thinking about it right at any particular second or not.  You could fill a mobius strip of infinite size with every artist, lawyer, teacher, doctor, parent who sought justice and how they did it and why they did it.  Everything involved in their quest--all that was learned, all that was sacrificed--the courage that was created.  

I was somewhere in my 40's before I had any idea of what "spiritual" might mean.  I'm almost 55 now, and I know people my own age or older who still don't understand what the word denotes.  It's not that those friends don't have a spiritual dimension of their life, it's just that they haven' t bracketed and named that part of their experience, or maybe they have another name for it.

Looking back from what I know now, I think my first aware experience of a spiritual dimension of life was when I was five, looking out my brother's window.  We both had rooms upstairs.  His was interested in biology and fifteen years older than I.  When he was away at college, I would come into his room and look at all the specimens of baby animals and so forth that were pickled in jars.  I also liked to sit on his bed and examine his view of our town from his window at the front of our house. 

My window was in the back of the house, and I looked out over orchards and roads.  I used to pretend that the orchards were forests, and that we could journey through the forests to mountains beyond, like in fairy stories about journeys to magic kingdoms.  But my brother's window showed us our neighbors' houses and streets.  From his window you couldn't see the Catholic church, but you could hear the bell resounding over the housetops, and it was the sound of this bell that I loved.  It was Easter morning, warm, and the bell was ringing, ringing across town, calling for people to come together and worship.  The air smelled of earth and spring, the bell sounds hanging beautiful, and all around people going to the church.  I sat there on the pink and blue striped bedspread, knowing all these things at the same time, and I was enchanted--deeply happy--more than willing to be a part of this morning, a participant in this life. 

If you would have asked me at that moment what it was like, I might have told you, "magical."  That would be my first word for something spiritual---something numinous that transports us from this every day world to a level of awareness where we realize the sacredness of it all, and we can be amazed.  And this amazement has unfolded for me like a story; my life is a connect-the-dots from moment of amazement to moment of amazement, and sometimes the gray line in between is years long.  Each revelation tells me something, but I'm not sure what, exactly.  It lets me know there is magic under the skin of "reality," under the minute of time, under the assumption of a body and a life's story line.  It reminds me and gives me faith that there are magics in the universe so deep, abiding and beautiful that they are the CAUSE of this universe and everything in it, and yet run deeper and wider. 

Did you ever find that the images you encounter on the internet when you're looking for an image--well, that they're so synchronous that it gets downright creepy?  Yesterday I was actually "afraid to look" after seeing myself at the window (see yesterday's blog about looking out the window).  I didn't use THAT picture! 

They say time is what keeps everything in the unverse from happening at once. 

The blog yesterday was about myself as a 5-year-old looking out a window.  Looking for pictures of views from a window, I encounter girls looking out and dolls...  and ghostly girls looking out the window.  And a few years ago I went back to my chlldhood bedroom and found it FULL of dolls--excquisite dolls--occupied by a doll maker.  Now what are the odds of that?  Cosmic mega-vibe wish fulfillment?  Oh, if it weren't for time, I'd be a little girl there in the company of dozens and dozens of dolls.

I went back tonight to the blog I wrote in early October of last year as a tribute to a man I will always love with all my soul, who passed away.  I had posted the best video on it that I could figure out to post, and I knew it wasn't exactly the right one, but it needed music.  And oddly that video was completely gone.  OK.  I'd been thinking for awhile of posting "Dog and the Butterfly" by Heart instead, because he liked that one a lot, and he's definitely a butterfly.  He used to sing it to me, with a beautiful smile!  So I found a version of the song on YouTube that I liked.  I listened to it all the way through.  It begins and ends with images of a butterfly.  There are many different images in the video, and when I copied it, it was at the end and had played completely, so that it ended on a butterfly picture.  But when I hit the "Post Entry" button to place the video at the end of that blog, it posted on a frame in the middle with the only picture in the whole video of a young woman crying. 

I've been looking at synchronicity, which can be anywhere and everywhere.  I'm also wondering what image to put on this blog.  I think it's just got to be a random one, to see if it's synchronous to anyone...  Hmm.  That image up there is interesting, isn't it?  I found it by googling "random image."  I think I'll add a random video.  Why not?  :)

My emotions IS my body, Buzz! 

Hormones, yeah.

Messages from here to there.

Complexity, a stew of biochemicals

If you've seen What the Bleep, then you know what I'm trying to say,

But in that movie they were looking mainly at the brain.

Even something like hunger

Happens in the brain.

When the brain processes hormones that have been sent up from the top of the small intestine.

You've got muscles and organs and glands secreting hormones,

and the brain activating

and the mind interpreting all of this.

So where IS that separation between emotions and body that we are conditioned to perceive?

And certainly our organs and body cells have their own memories.

Holography all over the body.

Oh GOD, it feels GOOD!  :)

I learned that if I move my body, it's easier for my mind to think. 

Like, for example, I've got a problem to work out... or maybe I can't figure out how to express an idea, or anything like that.

So I go exercise and move around.  Somewhere in the 20 minutes- to 45 minutes-later range of time, an answer will pop into my head.  How cool is that? 

It's not just the "now the body is healthier" angle where you look at the increased oxygen consumption and the cycling of toxins out of the body in sweat and so forth.  That DOES pertain, but on a deeper level, it's about integration of the person on a holistic level.  An increase in mental performance and creativity is related to why "crawl therapy" may help to heal people with impaired psychological functions.  There is a left/right brain programming and synching that is best done by physically moving the body, and it's very rudimentary in its effects.

So, if you want to solve your conundrum, move your body! 

When I was in my crib, I remember thinking that I wanted to be born in this place because they don't have any kings.  I knew that I was located on a really big, big piece of land (North America), and that it had big waters to both the left of it and the right of it (those are the Pacific and the Atlantic).  What I got a little off was I thought I was more in the middle of it (my original concept of my placement would have put me somewhere in the midwest, but I was born in California).  Oh well, two out of three ain't bad for a three-year-old. 

When I was four, I was visited by a certain spirit, and we talked about whether I would write a book.  He told me that I could if I wanted to, but that it wasn't required.  The book I planned to write when I was four would be the story of my whole life, and I would write it when I'm old.  It would help people to not suffer as they went through life and learned and grew.  The spirit was kind of like, "That's nice, kid.  Do it if you can."  The implication was that I'd have more than enough to keep me busy, and that things kind of take care of themselves anyway. 

Now that I'm grown up, my concept of what is meant by "purpose in life" is more complex.  "Purpose" has several dimensions of meaning, and no meaning at all.  Going with what the spirit's approach was, just being alive is meaning enough.  So, let's say that Job One is realizing that I'm alive, and fully being alive. 

And then there's the whole enterprise of bringing God's LOVE into the world, through learning how to love and loving.  There is so much suffering.  It's good to bring another point of view--a view from the heart. 

Also, I'm a mom and a wife and I've brought these beautiful souls into the world.  They wanted to be here, and my job is to love them and be supportive of their life walk. 

And I'm a teacher.  And in that role of teacher, there's a lot of responsibility to others, too.  I'm there to provide a place where these souls can be safe and grow, and yet be challenged.

And I'm here to dance with you, to share the joys and sorrows, the challenges and the creative enterprises with YOU, my beautiful friends.

And I still don't know.  Maybe I'll write the book someday...

3:30 a.m. this morning, I was sound asleep, and the damn cat wakes me up. Open the back door so I can go out because I have to go poop and tomcat around so wake up NOW NOW NOW NOW!!!!!!  So damn it, I'm up and sliiiiiiiiide goes the back door, and then sliiiiiiiiiide again for closed.  Shit.  Now I'm awake. God damn it!  NOW I'm thinking about finances and how to deal with students and what to do with my classes and how to comply with the grant I've got to do and how to write the stuff for the accreditation and on and on and on and on and on and on for two and a half hours wide awake, and you know how stuff is always much more awful when you contemplate it in the middle of the night.  If I didn't love that cat so much I'd murder it 24 times over.

5:30ish evidently I sliiiiiiiiide back into sleep, and then alarm goes off at 6:00 a.m., but exhausted, I fall back to sleep but this is not a good idea as there is the mandatory 8:00 a.m. meeting where I must contribute ALL that I've been working on for a major project, but I'm back asleep anyway.

I dream that Michael is screaming at me for not paying the bills (which is not true, but that is happening in the dream).  We are at a show being put on by my service-learning students in a park.  Michael is really pissed off and he leaves.  I leave my purse on a picnic table to go after him.  When I come back, someone has stolen all my IDs and credit cards.  I have to go the the University of the Pacific campus to find the campus police to report this crime, so I can use their phone to call my bank.  The police ask me how old I am.  I tell them I'm almost 55.  They say THAT is why the theives stole my identity--that it happens to people when they turn 55 if they're not lucky.  I leave to go back to the picnic area, but someone calls to me, "Hey there!" I turn around.  At the top of a steep hill, there is Michael.  He got a ride in the back of a truck to come find me.  He's there by me, and he has just accepted that my identity stuff has been stolen, and now he's my friend again, a sweet pal who goes around with me for the rest of the dream.  Now it's 6:35 and I'm behind schedule.  I thank Mike for being so nice to me during the dream.  Huh?  I make it to the meeting by 8:15.  Surprisingly, I've done enough work, and work of good enough quality.  I wend my way through the rest of the day, one sticky situation at a time.  The photos must be high resolution, and they must show GateWay students doing service-learning, but the students must be baby boomers.  They must be wearing GateWay T shirts.

WAIT A MINUTE!

No.  I'm not going to cram people into some stupid T shirt to make a point for someone else.  That is demeaning.  These people don't want to wear a stupid T shirt.  They can hold a banner with the school logo, but no T shirts. 

I get my way.  It's not an ego thing.  It's a necessary thing.  It's out of respect. 

Hey!  Maybe I got my identity back!  :)

T'other day I was writing about how it's so much easier for me to get some insights when I move around and exercise.  Today I was movin' around in my Jazzercise class, which I really like.  They were playing a song that I've never particularly favorited, Billy Idol's "Dancing With Myself."  They play it to sustain the cardio peak of the workout and you have to move really fast in ways that hurt my feet, so I kind of sandbag it.  And as I was sandbagging the song and looking at the class dancing and looking at all of us in the mirror and in real life, I realized that all we really do is dance with ourself.  There was this wonderful insight of how we are all One, and time sort of was secondary at that moment, too, because I realized that I'd had something of the same insight the night before while walking down the hallway, and that the realization of Then was continuing and expanding Now, regardless of the countless seconds in between.

I reflect a lot.  This is true about me, and I knew it about myself as I danced poorly there in the Jazzercise class.  I realized at that moment (if one could say there are moments at all--there are no seconds and no moments, but that really isn't important, because as soon as you need them, there they are) finally, what my blog is about.  It is a record for myself and for whomever careens by to read some of it, of my reflections.  Really, that's it.  I've tried to focus the blog (like in my first blogs I tried to write just about meditation) but this writing process resists restriction.  I've tried writing about issues, like social issues, but sometimes that's not the heartful thing to produce.  It's just reflection. 


And after all, isn't that all that the Divine Life Force is doing?  Seeing itself in you and me, the pica-billion dancing sparkles of the shattered Mirror of Universal Consciousness?  And, as I re-read this before posting, I've got to add that the mirror never really broke at all.  It's a universe of Good Luck!  Ah!    YES!  NOW I KNOW why there had to be an elf.  (At the beginning of this I wrote the title and then asked myself what the "elf" was for.)  It's a leprechaun.  And THAT!.....  and THAT!...  is the Secret that makes the leprechaun Lucky.  He knows it's an unbroken universe.  The mirror never shattered, and we're really all connected.  So think about THAT one!  :)

Due to a variety of things that have happened recently
it emerged from me
and bubbled up
and created itself
in a cleansing and quite unusual
spell of positive anger
that I'm finished feeling bad
because someone else
thinks it would be appropriate
for me to feel bad.

I'm a good person
a nice person;
which means that I hold up my end of the sky
with you,
as you hold up yours.
It means I love you
and I would never purposefully hurt or
even inconvenience you.

But I'm finished feeling incompetent
just because you think I am.
I've been The Family Nincompoop
all my life,
and I'm ready to be just me.

I've decided that I'm competent enough
Clean enough
Smart enough
Accomplished enough
Formally educated enough (and not "too much")
Successful enough
and Worldly enough
(ah, the Family Values hard at work)
to meet any reasonable set of expectations,
and if you have some other
urgent criticism,
that's your problem.

Went to a TAG (Technical Assistance Grant) meeting, where people who live in our local brownfield superfund cleanup area get involved in getting it cleaned up.  We've got mammoth underground water pollution here in Phoenix, and although we don't drink that particular water, fumes from it can still affect us, and it's still sitting there as a fouled mess about 15 ft. down.  People were talking about "catching cancer" from the water.  And what occurred to me is that cancer isn't a disease you can catch, it's the body's response to some stimulus.  And then I just stopped and listened to what my brain had just thought.

So cancer is something a person's body DOES.  So we MAKE the cancer, and in fact we ARE the cancer, literally We are one and the same with those cells.  Hmm. 

And some people get cancer and some don't, when exposed to the same stimulus.  (Think some person who has smoked for 45 years and not developed cancer.) 

So, it stands to reason that in understanding how to deal with cancer, we should look at how our body's cells respond to stressors.  Is there some reason that one person's cells are more resilient to stressors than others? 

I haven't read anyone else's response yet, but I imagine a lot of us have at some point overvalued material success and "fitting in."  I know that I've done that. 

Honestly, I'm very tired of shopping, and I wouldn't care if I never went shopping again.  But I probably would for some reasons.  Shopping for people who really have a need is ok. 

Cats are poets, too!    ...Narcissism IS TOO a genre!