Fully Here

My head is full of thoughts of conscious creation and of setting intentions to engage energy. I am planning a class discussion even as I am out in the world, at the post office, doing groceries. I am there, but not quite. Neither am I fully here.

 

I place an order for refried beans in Spanish, because I am shopping in that kind of a place, where I can speak Spanish to the man behind the counter. I am friendly enough, but somewhat absent, still thinking of the session that put me on this train of thought about setting intentions and making requests.

 

A voice at my side asks if I am Colombian. It is a young man, with skin so smooth, I think he can’t yet be shaving. He tells me his “prometida,” his intended, is Colombian, and he recognizes my accent. His eyes radiate joy when he mentions her. He leaves with a smile, when his order arrives, and I am left bathed in his fresh, expectant energy, in his exuberance.

 

Gratitude breaks over me, for the grace that comes with him, that remains within me, reminding me that I much prefer to be present to this, What Is before me, to this gift that is the Now, and experience this immediacy, the intimacy of what I am living and breathing at this moment. I much prefer to be fully here.

Photo Credit: Andrea Friedmann

 

 

A Circle of Women

A circle of women, present to themselves, to each other, safe in one another’s presence… I find a powerful energy there. For a long time now, I have wanted to foster this energy, pull it together. I have fed myself stories of calling up power, of building energy. But when I am sitting there, facing the center, and meeting the eyes of my companions, I recognize they have been stories… the energy is intrinsic to the circle, where each woman is a spoke connected to the center, where, together, we create the shape. The energy, it is ours, for us and from us.

In this space, we can open our hearts, allowing their energies to radiate outward, to merge and weave together into a brilliant tapestry. We find courage to hear our own voices, speaking, sometimes, what we have never brought ourselves to say. We offer nourishment, and receive sustenance. We recognize our strengths, and grow stronger. We find our clarity, and become clearer. We remember what we know at our core, and grow wiser.

This circle of women offers more gifts than my consciousness can hold. I open myself to receive them, and I offer myself, as well, to transmit them.

Photo credit: Sanja Gjenero at RGBstock.com

In Full Alignment

Some days I am in full alignment.

I don’t know what that means, with my mind.

I feel it in the currents of energy streaming through me,

streaming from me,

like rivers… quiet on the surface,

but deep and strong, pulling boulders, underneath.

Some days I am in full alignment.

I don’t know what I know,

but I am aware of the luminous threads that connect me

to the butterflies closing their wings over a blossom,

to the roots of the trees, extending beneath the soil,

to the wisdom in the healing hands of a forgotten ancestor

tending to the pain of a child.

Some days I am in full alignment.

I don’t know who I am,

but I don’t need a name for myself,

I don’t need a name for the radiance breathing me.

I stand upright,

the heart of me open,

and I step forth.

Photo Credit: Graham Soult at RGBstock.com

I Am All That

I accept an invitation out of my hiding place in the small closet, where I am cramped and tight, where I can only whisper. I step out, expecting to find a huge room, maybe a ballroom.

But I am in a grassy field high in the mountains, surrounded by dandelions blooming bright. I look around and recognize this place, I can see the familiar Andes stretching in the distance, beyond the shimmering forest that grows at the field’s distant edges. My heart expands with gratitude and joy, for this is home.

But suddenly I am drawn halfway down the mountain, towards a small, young forest of silvery eucalyptus trees. I am drawn there, and, unexpectedly, I am the forest, feeling each tree and its roots stretching into the soil. I am that soil, particle by particle. I am the grass, blade by blade, and the field entire, lapping up to the forest edge.  I am the pond beyond that, molecule by molecule of water. I am the mountains pushing up out of the crust of the earth and tripping on themselves away, away, here. I am the distance and the very air. That is my body.

I can see my own eyes, soft and loving, silver-grey in the blur of silver and grey and brown and green and blue and white that is me. I can see the waves that radiate through me, and I can feel them rippling outwards in my human heart.

I am all that.

Only Once

Yesterday morning I stepped into the Arizona sunlight, facing the mountains, and felt, more than heard, the chatter of a flock of birds. Simultaneously, behind me, dove was calling softly. Unexpectedly, suddenly, I was transported from that place and time. I experienced a hundred awakenings to that mournful call; I was, again, overcome with a sense of safety, of being held, as surely only a baby can feel. Was it my heart, my chest, or all of me opening, loosening, radiating?

This all occurred in a few short minutes. I know this because we were about to leave for the airport, to return home, and I had requested a moment outside alone. But there was a timelessness to the experience, that, when it was over, I wanted to hold on to. And I remembered this:

Only Once by Denise Levertov

All which, because it was
flame and song and granted us
joy, we thought we’d do, be, revisit,
turns out to have been what it was
that once, only; every invitation
did not begin
a series, a build-up: the marvelous
did happen in our lives, our stories
are not drab with its absence: but don’t
expect to return for more. Whatever more
there will be will be
unique as those were unique. Try
to acknowledge the next
song in its body — halo of flames as utterly
present, as now or never.

My job is a gift

Today I am awed once again at my immesurable fortune! My mind can almost not believe that my work, my job, the activity that for so many means forcing themselves to be present, always allows me to see the magic of the universe at work; it feels like a gift that is almost too grand to accept.

My job is to recognize the radiance in the person on the other side of the room or the phone and to help them recognize it too, help them gently fan the flames of their dreams into roaring bonfires. I get to witness the shift in their energy when they remember their wisdom, their brilliance, when they decide to honor their gifts.

There is such grace and beauty in this process of remembering, recognizing, honoring that, no matter how often I have observed it, I am moved each time I am privileged to witness it.

This is what fills my days; what more could I ask for?