sueeeus

a hummingbird in December

I’m taking it as a sign of some sort.  It will present itself eventually.  I hastened to clean and fill the feeder, in the hopes it will soon return.  My mom loves birds.

~*~*~*~

I’m going to tell you my dream, Mama.  And some of my thoughts.  I want to hear about your dream, Mama, and what it looked and felt like from where you are.  We will compare notes!

We are in the spirit, so we present ourselves in joyful child form, sparkling little girls.  You with your platinum curls, golden eyes, and milky white skin, me with my wispy brown waves that won’t stay out of my face (I get that from you, by the way).  We are wearing fluffy dresses and roller skates, regular Shirley Temples!  I take your hands and we clasp them criss-cross.  We are in the spirit and I assure you that we can do this.  After all, I saw it done at Teatro Zinzanni!  We are on a circular pedestal and we begin to skate in a spinning circle, round and round, faster and faster.  We are joyful little girls, skating our hearts out, giggling with delight.  I’ve explained to you that as we spin, we are weaving a web of light, and we are opening a portal to heaven.  Because we are getting ready to do some healing work.  We need a strong beam that will serve as a funnel, a tornado of light that will draw the poisons and sufferings out from our beings and incinerate them with the fire of heaven.

We spin together, round and round, faster and faster, and we weave a funnel like a beehive, with thick honey golden coils, but it’s not enough.  We need a pyre with the strength of a hurricane for what we are to do.  The dream changes, and we are no longer little girls.  I’ve summoned the siblings and we are all here, your tribe, all of us, in the spirit.  We are joined together hand in hand, encircling you, tenderly.  You are a slight and elder form, seated on a cushion or a couch, maybe your hospital bed.  You glow with an ethereal platinum light, and we, your tribe, glow brightly with a golden white light.  You are not strong and we radiate a cushion of warmth that surrounds you and holds you so that you can rest and float and allow the poisons and sufferings to flow out when heaven’s gate is opened.  Our hands clasped, we form a tribal circle and dance around a blazing fire.  It’s a magical display, a joyful pow-wow.  There is so much energy as we dance and celebrate and rejoice and love.  The fire blazes stronger and stronger and the golden tendrils of light weave together, stronger, tighter, stronger, tighter, forming a blazing tornado of golden white light.  The tornado blazes, tended by the tribe.  You and I are back to little girl form, two Shirley Temples, seated in the center of the tornado, where it is quiet and still.  My arm is around you and I’m the big sister now.  You feel lost and afraid; you are small.  I hold you and comfort you and assure you that I will protect you, that you don’t have to be afraid, you don’t have to know what to do, you don’t have to know who to be or how to be.  You can just rest and I will hold you and take care of you.  I’ve got you.  We are in the spirit, I say.  See?!  You relax and melt into my embrace.  I brush a wisp of your platinum hair from your sweet face.  Now we are ready.  I hold you, you beautiful, pure, innocent and precious child.  You are wrapped in my embrace, and we are wrapped in the holy blazing embrace of heaven.  We are in the still place where time and space have no meaning.  The space between.  Where our molecules and our energy are distinct, and we swim about through the waves and fields of the essence of our being.  Here we find the poisons and sufferings and draw them out, out, out, like the way a log jam collects and grows and is gently yet persistently carried downstream towards a waterfall, the poisons are pulled through the blazing tornado, seared, clarified, and absorbed into heaven’s embrace.  We swim and stir up the waters to release more sufferings.  We extend our reach to embrace those near us, our beloveds; we are all in the spirit in this cosmic goo, so we beckon their sufferings out and away, to send them back to become one with heaven, too.

There were other dreams.  So many dreams.  I showed you my chedvah place with the bright pea pod green grass and blue blue sky.  I showed you my sleeping diamond-skinned dragon mother-ship.  We climbed inside the ship, two little girls, and hid and played.

And I helped you see, from my eyes, how worthwhile your life has been, how you always did the best that you knew how to do, how your part brought about deep and widespread blessings, and how thankful I am for you.

~*~*~*~

Somewhere in the night I had a moment of conviction in which the clear act of faith is to go ahead and book the vacation rental house for our summer celebration of life and family, and to boldly assume that we will celebrate her birthday together in February as planned.

I hope she feels strong enough to continue earthly living.  For myself, I think about the sunset years, and there is a hope to share the sweetness of age with my dear sisters.  I wish for my mom and her sister to be able to share more of their sunset together.

And selfishly, we all wish for Mom to want to hold on, because we’re just too tired to process more loss right now.

He has gone back to the river of souls.

~*~*~*~

Sail on, little bird.  Sail on, my dear baby brother.  Thank you for shining your brightness in the world, for the time that you had to shine.  I’m the lucky one, that I got to be counted among your beloved.  We are the lucky ones, your beloved.  We love you so.

~*~*~*~

We are so connected, my tribe.  We seldom see each other, or speak with each other, but our ties run deep, not constrained by space and time.  We feel each other, as though we are networked together.  And so we are.

~*~*~*~

Such an inescapable anguish!  We know he wouldn’t wish this on any of us, my brothers in arms, and we are so acutely aware in this moment that we don’t ever wish this on each other, this inevitable part of living.  We don’t want each other to suffer.  We love each other too much, too deeply, and want to protect each other from such anguish.  To the extent that we chide with each other that we need to make a joint pact such that we can all just go at the same time and spare each other this part of things.  And then we laugh.  Because we know that it’s all just a part of things, and the thing that is important to remember in the here and now is just that, the here and now.  Live fully, here, now.  Joy in this day.  In this very day.  Love now.

~*~*~*~

I’m trying to find a way to describe with words the expression of these feelings.  Something like the way that all colors blend into one to become pure white, in a similar fashion, all emotions blend into one to become pure white love in its most raw and ragged form.  It’s blazing with a radiance that can almost not be looked upon, and the flames are ragged and jagged explosions, bursts, that radiate outward from the core, which is, I suppose, the main line, the spirit of God.  Exquisitely unbearable.  It’s a feeling that’s almost too painful and too exhilarating to feel, each extreme emotion pulled to its outermost ragged limit, to the point of shatter, and there they all coexist, all the emotions, as all the colors, on the verge of explosion, barely contained.  Raw.  Pure.  Love.

When I retreat to find that place of healing, I think it’s my version of prayer.  I described it, in part, before. 

There’s another version in which I’m not in the physical plane at all, so there’s no figure, no spinning, no tornado.  My non-physical self finds the heart-spark and I visualize breathing on it, deeply and gently, carefully coaxing the ember to emerge and grow.  I breathe my emotions out, feeding the glowing white ember, and it becomes stronger and stronger and warms me and nourishes me at the same time.  There’s a flow happening, kind of like a toroidal Fibonacci thing, and I suppose that figuratively my heart is at the center, and there comes a point where the center opens up (sort of like the way the jaws on a chuck open to release a drill bit), and the flow becomes more like a fire hose, bright white light, sort of like that scene from the 5th Element, where she completes the circuit.  Then I am breathing long deep steady breaths, and it’s as though I’m a vacuum cleaner, this firehose stream of bright light, pulling people’s struggles out and away from them.  It’s sort of like lucid dreaming, in which my physical body is doing one thing — the breathing — and some part of my mental self is monitoring the whole scene; it knows that my soul self has gone out to take care of a few things…  My spirit (?) then scans for anguish and sends tendrils out from the main stream to reach out and connect to those pains so that they can flow out from where they are causing suffering.  In those moments, it seems as though I’m channeling, that I am in the spirit, and that I draw those sufferings away from these people who are crying out in their innermost hearts, and those sufferings are drawn into the stream where they dissolve and become shiny new energy, ready to launch new dreams.  All the while, tears flow, and I feel as though I am healing (because my own emotions are flowing out and away from me), and that I am helping others to heal as well.

Sometimes I wonder if this is my calling, the thing that I’m supposed to be doing.  Maybe I’m a healer.  Nobody needs to know that I even exist, for me to do this work.

There is another version of healing trance that I can describe.  It’s like the first one, in which I visualize myself spinning, arms spread, spinning around and around, sending waves of light, love, comfort, and harmony out from my extended hands, weaving a tornado of protection around me.  I stand in the center of stillness and catch my breath and gather my strength.  When I am filled with strength, I envision myself, sort of like an Olympic figure skater, spinning so fast and then pulling the body in tighter and tighter, spinning faster and faster, tighter, so tight, all that spinning energy gathering speed deep and close in.  Spinning faster, faster, tighter, smaller, more and more concentrated, a cyclone, like nuclear fusion, faster, tighter, smaller, until it’s almost infinite energy bound in an infinitesimal point…   ….and then POW!  It’s a pulse explosion, and I send a blast across the cosmos and it surges over and through everything in its path as it radiates and washes a blast of healing energy out through the dimensions, cosmos, layers.  It sounds megalomaniacal, now that I describe it.

~*~*~*~

Those have been the forms my prayers have taken, for some years.  I have two new forms that have emerged since Tuesday last.

~*~*~*~

It’s like the others, in getting the ember going, and the tendrils of light are like threads, and I begin a looping crochet stitch, weaving a chain mesh until I’ve completed a circle and then begin the next circle, interweaving each new loop, and the chain begins to take form and grow strong, and then new weavers come, all of those who are pouring out their love right now, their spirits find this thread and they all begin to weave their light threads into a web of healing light, a fortress of love pouring into my brother, seeping into all the areas where strength and healing are needed.  All of the looping and interweaving continues, building a glistening, radiant cocoon, while concurrently, the beloveds are all joined arm in arm like a ring of children, dancing in a circle, singing a loving song, spinning an outer shield of pure white light up and around the weavers, around the cocoon.  We are all in the spirit, channeling our love together, nourishing him, nourishing each other.  We heal each other as we heal him.  And he heals us.

~*~*~*~

The other vision begins like the figure skating one, only we are here together, and he’s on a hoverboard  or skateboard thing and I’m on skates.  The first time, it began with just me, and then we found each other and teamed up.  Now, we meet back up and say, time to get back to work.  This, because I keep falling asleep from exhaustion.  I am so fatigued that my body just stops.  It’s been such a long time since I’ve been able to sleep deeply, and now I don’t have a choice.  I wake up, and go about my day in a sort of a detached state, doing the things that I have to do, but with a sense of hurry, because I need to be able to stop and be quiet and still and try to find my way back to that place, because we have so much work to do.  I get back, and we skate about, looking for all the places that need to be attended, and we infuse, we fortify, we weave new connections.  The beloveds have arrived, and we’re all skating up, down, in, around, our trails of golden light fusing new pathways.  It’s kind of like the enchanted cleanup scene from Beauty and the Beast, where all the enchanted ones dance about in a joyful and exuberant display, pixie dust sparkling here, there, twinkle, poof, all the while the place being put back into order, tip top.  He leads the way on his hoverboard, spinning loop-the-loops and figure eights, this way guys, follow me!  We laugh and skate and make a golden new network to let the love flow where it needs to go.

I love how music and art carry fragments of the soul language that ties us all together.  I swim in it and my mind and body melt into the sound and we all become one, floating in the river of allness.  Emotions flow in and out and all around, and it’s a beautiful and healing immersion.

You ask me where did I fall — I’ll say I can’t tell you when.

But if my spirit is lost, how will I find what is near?  Don’t question, I’m not alone; Somehow I’ll find my way home.

My sun shall rise in the east, so shall my heart be at peace.  And if you’re asking me when, I’ll say it starts at the end.  You know your will to be free is matched with love, secretly.  And talk will alter your prayer.  Somehow you’ll find you are there!

Your friend is close by your side, and speaks in far ancient tongue.  A season’s wish will come true.  All seasons begin with you.  A world we all come from, one world –we melt into one!  Just hold my hand and we’re there!  Somehow we’re going somewhere!

–Jon & Vangelis

I sure love that song.  

I’ve been thinking about being born again, and what it’s like, in order to somehow describe it, and came to see it as a moment of complete surrender. A holy conviction. In that surrender of your heart, you open it and find yourself in a river of golden light, and at that moment you understand you are one with The Everything and that you, your heart, is safe. It is like a switch in your innermost awareness and consciousness. From that moment you know. You know that you know that you know that you know. You’ve literally seen the light, been in the light, been the light. You are transformed. Born again. You’ve been given your holy conviction. As I write these thoughts, I see an image like Tinkerbell or the Fairy Godmother, and a twinkling flash from the tip of her wand as the gift is bestowed.

We are given that spark in many different ways. To some, through meditation. To some, through music. To some, through nature. To some, through numbers. To some, though Jesus.

I wonder what happens in that moment. It’s like it’s an orgasm of the soul. Maybe our indigenous DMT is released. It doesn’t just happen though. It required the surrender, and some things had to happen in order to come to that place of surrender. Spiritual foreplay, if you will.

We wander along a path and encounter various things that leave impact somewhere deep within, and these impacts begin to collect and form and grow. They grow and grow and the pressure and tension mounts and you finally open the sphincter of your heart. It’s that moment when the light floods in. Limitless undying love which shines around you like a million suns. Sweet surrender.

It IS an orgasm of the soul. DMT must somehow be involved. It’s more than oxytocin and endorphins, as with physical orgasms.

I don’t want to reduce spiritual awakening to a matter of chemistry; it’s more an exploration of what happens and why. There are many intermingled layers of happenings, physical and non-physical, and who could possibly understand it all, or how could it even be understood? The fact remains that something does happen. A transformation takes place. You are changed.

For me, I call it a holy conviction. My holy conviction. I doubt that I could articulate what I believe; it’s more a knowing, and I can’t even articulate that. It’s real, though. My holy conviction is seared in my heart, shake-able, but unbreakable.

Found in a notebook…

It’s July, It’s 2017. It’s a Tuesday night and I’ve had a stressful day and I’m unwinding. I wrote this:

Use your molecules wisely.

Spend your molecules wisely.

….Molecules….

YOUR Molecules

It’s what you’ve got. GOD gave them to you. This most inexplicable gift! Privilege!!! How are you going to honor them?

L I V E

Live it UP!!! LIFE is your gift!!! It’s what you’ve GOT! Rejoice in all things! Why not?! Why NOT?!!!???!!

<3

On my way to work, I thought about my core, my spirituality, my truth. I had to re-group, to re-think and re-consider the spiritual stance that I’ve been holding staunchly for all of these years. Ever since the time that I set in my heart to learn and to know. The phrase that captures my thoughts is ‘The Mystery of Being’. Thoughts about life. Existentialism…

If the earth is a closed system –physically, anyway– the matter within the gravity field and atmosphere remains somewhat constant. There is space and the cosmos, but for the bulk of the argument, it’s probably valid to consider earth as a closed system. So for physical laws, the matter of which living things are comprised is the same matter of which living things were comprised before us. Carbon’s anniversary. What are we made of? The molecules that comprise us belonged to someone else and something else before we got the privilege of vesseling them. So who am I? Not 24601… Maybe my molecules were part of a healer or an artist or a warrior. What if there is or are other dimensions beyond anything physically comprehensible, but just as visible for those who have eyes to see? What if who I am carries fragments of the spirits of those who have gone before me? Of course it’s easy to recognize remnants of those from whom I’ve come directly –genetics. But what about more? The matter that has existed for all the ages as we know them. My molecules could have been part of someone else. Not could. MUST. We are carbon based! Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. But our spirit! Our soul! What if the fragments are part of universal one-ness? That’s redundant, but I don’t know how else to say it. DMT -The Spirit Molecule… This substance that is a part of all living things. A common thread. And the enlightenment that is revealed when a human is exposed.

I think about the meaning of life. What’s the point? Maybe there’s no point. It’s a gift and a privilege we’ve been given. Do with it what we want, while we have it. Joy. Or don’t rejoice or embrace it. But it’s ours to live. So why not live it the way we want? We get to choose everything. We do what we do for whatever reason we do it. It’s all good. There’s no need for stress. Today is today. I will live it the best way that I can. I will do what I can do, and when I can’t do anything more or anything else, then I will stop, and that is okay.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child…

It’s time to put the big boy pants back on.  I’ve been struggling, trying to regroup and regain strength with which to face all that is before me.  I’m at a loss to articulate the whats and wherefores, and I’ve found myself again in a place of internal anguish and exhaustion.  I find myself chasing restoration via a web of neovascularization; thought streams venturing out looking for nourishment in unfriendly terrain.

now I know in part

Where is the healing for the healer?  Where is the guidance for the guide?   The answers are always given to me, when I pay attention and notice.  When I’m weary and depleted I look for ways to replenish and nourish my fragmented self.  Sometimes my efforts seem to fail and I’m left feeling even more frustrated and worn.  Sometimes, on days like this day, I just have to stop.

…the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof…

When I catch myself feeling frustrated, falling to the base emotions that I so heartfully want to overcome, I struggle through a barrage of thoughts along these lines: Why do I feel this way?  What do I need?  Why am I thinking ungraciously?  Why am I annoyed?  What do I expect?

I need to be gracious.  I can’t expect anyone to think as I think, see as I see, feel as I feel, understand as I understand, know as I know.

through a glass darkly

Everything is nothing and nothing is everything.  What if it’s all the same.  Or everything matters and nothing matters.  What if that’s all the same.  Consider the perfection of a circle.  The starting point is the finishing point.  They are one and the same.  It takes something external to provide a reference of distinction.  Time.  I can tell the difference between the beginning and the end when I introduce time, but the thing is, that point, zero degrees or 360 degrees, remains that point, whether time is involved or not.  Is it a beginning?  Is it an end?  Maybe it just is.

The reminder that came to me has everything to do with time.  Life as I know it is a journey, and we are all at different stages with different capacities, abilities, understandings and levels of knowledge.  Our world views are limited by our own exposure and awareness.  Ages and stages.  There is generally an order of progression with things.  I suppose that defines growth.  We are all at different ages and stages.

and yet show I unto you a more excellent way

I can’t expect anybody to understand me.  I’m not even sure why I have such a hunger.  Maybe it’s an existential thing.  Maybe if I felt understood, then I would feel valid.  As if I need a reason to be.  I certainly don’t want my children to think they need a reason to be!  So why would I think such a thing for myself?!

At this age and stage, I’m the grownup in the room.  I have to put the big boy pants back on.  Help is and always has been when and where I need it.  Everything that I need is available to me, when I open my eyes.  Life is a treasure, full of breathtaking wonder, a dazzling tapestry all around me, for my own joy and rejoicing.  I have all the strength and love that I need.  I am here.  Now.

My beautiful friend, the Resonant German, gently observed that I haven’t written on this blog for a full year.  It’s not that I have nothing to process — if only!   In the interest of mental housekeeping, I’ve taken a step back from non-critical media, which includes social media, and most media.  I might have gone a bit too far, since I missed daylight savings time and sent my man-child to the bus stop an hour early last Monday.  It’s already another Monday and I’ve just found this article hanging around in my drafts — another Monday and I’m working on pulling myself together to face another span of days.

This time of year immerses me in waves of emotions, my own and those I absorb from others, and I’m feeling depleted.  I’m on the same quest for understanding, but there is such a sense of urgency now.  I’m watching my kids grow up so quickly and I don’t have the answers I want and need to share with them, to prepare them for life.  I’m surrounded by friends and family in need of guidance, comfort, strength, and encouragement.  I want to help.

My spiritual foundation has been rocked recently, which I didn’t think was possible. I’m regrouping and getting my bearings, and I know –I KNOW– that I’m on the horizon of a breakthrough in understanding.

With horror, I see signs of depression manifesting in my beautiful gentle giant BB, and I haven’t learned for my self how to stay above it.  With two successful –successful is SO NOT the right word — suicides in the family, and a host of mental health challenges, it’s hard not to panic or feel helpless.

What’s that saying about a fine line between genius and insanity?  There are so many incredible people in my family –such staggering intelligence,  creativity, and talent. Maybe the brain gets frazzled from all that high power activity, and we go crazy. That’s a wry take on the yin-yang balance. Maybe insanity is the price one pays for genius.

What IS sane, anyway? It’s probably an attribute that applies to a statistical average of human population.

My commute takes the better part of two hours, each way.  I use the time to think.  I’m in my thirty second year of indentured servitude, and once again the corporate machine is groaning.  I’ve always been flummoxed by a company’s ability to stay in business and make profits under a consistent flow of poor decisions.

Comparison.  Competition.  There are times when I slip into that region of discontent.  I say discontent, because it seems that the state of contentedness is contrary to the concepts of competition and comparison.  Those concepts imply winning versus losing, better versus worse.  Contentedness suggests enough.  I like the idea of enough.

It started with an innocuous comment about success.  So and so is more successful than you (me) because so and so is perched at the top of the corporate ladder and is compensated accordingly.  The comps are flying already and I’ve barely begun this post.  I feel compelled to look into the root word structures –surely there are connections.  Comparison.  Competition.  Compensation.  Compel.  I digress, in true sueeeus fashion…

I was thinking about my initial reaction to the comment.  I felt defensive.  So and so isn’t better than me!  I could have reached the echelons of corporate leadership, had I chosen.  I felt hurt, as though it were some sort of reflection of failure on my part, as though I needed to convince someone, anyone, everyone, that I am just as good.  I felt jealous.  So and so makes more (money) than I do and has a fancy pants title.  Of more concern to me is why it even mattered.  My reaction was so immediate, and I felt as though I needed to justify myself and somehow assert that I am not a failure.  I also wonder why my reaction is so binary, so extreme.  Success.  Failure.  No in-between.

The nature of my work is all about the ones and the zeros, so there is that.  But the nature of my self is all about the in-betweens, or rather, perspectives.  Just because true/false, on/off, all/none, right/wrong are points that describe entities in a known dimension, it doesn’t necessarily mean that those are the only states.  They are obvious states, but not necessarily the only states.  Perception through one facet of a crystal may be very different from perception through another facet of the same crystal.  Is either right? Is either wrong?  They are simply different.  Why does there have to be a right or a wrong?

I think it’s a limitation of the human mind.  People are generally comfortable with the knowns.  Binary things are easy to wrap one’s mind around, because they are very simple to grasp.  Multidimensional things are complex.  Matrices within matrices from infinity to infinity in all directions.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I fell into a funk for a few days, as I worked through these thoughts.  I thought about the comparison game.  I mostly have the experience of my own life and culture to draw from, and it occurs to me that life as I know it has contained a steady feed of information that has contributed to the shape of my thoughts and emotions.  I don’t remember when it dawned on me that I could choose how to steer my thoughts and emotions.

There is so much conditioning taking place with the onslaught of information that we absorb through media.  When, if ever, does it occur to us to question the validity of the information that we absorb?  We get notions of body image based on the examples we see in print and on screen.  Does it occur to us to take a look around at a general cross-section of society and realize that almost nobody looks like the actors and models we see portraying life?  We get notions of romance which stem from fantasy and set expectations for reality, then feel let down that true love seems unattainable, when in fact we are living in a perfectly beautiful loving situation.  We are fed carefully crafted information designed to promote [something, someone].  It’s called marketing, and it’s a product of capitalism. It’s reason for being is to pad someone’s pockets or promote someone’s power or influence.

It’s so exhausting to justify myself to myself!  Once I recovered from my initial reactionary response to the self-inflicted judgment of failure (since I’m not the CEO), I reminded myself that I had faced precisely such a decision in my early twenties — I recognized ‘career path’ and saw clearly that although I was and am quite capable of ‘success’, that the capitalistic model of corporate America was contrary to my soul, and although the financial rewards and professional accolades are or were tempting, the internal price of or for success was simply not worth it.  I made a choice.

In retrospect, I don’t know where or how I ever attained such wisdom (I am working on some theories), but I am grateful.  Before I’d ever read Buckminster Fuller’s Critical Path, and by the grace of God, I made the better choice, the more valuable choice.  My success isn’t measured in terms of social status, professional status, financial status.  My success is measured in terms of soul status, and it’s only measured by me.

Throughout these thought streams, some key words or concepts kept surfacing.  Source.  Core.  For whatever reason, I am driven by the need to understand.  Anything. Everything.  It consistently emerges as something core to my very being.  I don’t know why (but I’m working on some theories).

Here’s an aside.  I have this thing about connections and structures and origins.  Keys.  Some of the keys that I’ve noted in order to collect and frame my thoughts are the words ‘core’ and ‘source’.  These words resonate with my soul.  In the overlap of my personal life with my professional life, the relevant catchphrase du jour emerges, “Never outsource your core competency.”  Look at that — source, core, comp.  All neatly bundled in a span of five words.  This correlation is busy whirring about in a background process of my mind, and I’m certain that something interesting will come of it, when the forefront of my mind is ready.

I’m no expert.  On anything.  That is the nature of knowledge.  The more you know, the more you realize how little you know of what there is to know.  That is where my affinity for source and core stem from (oh, if ever I could learn how to express myself without dangling participles, split infinitives and any and all manner of grammatical faux pas).

The affinity for source and core spans both my personal and professional lives.  One can think in terms of platform or foundation.  If the foundation isn’t sound, what then?  Every conclusion drawn from such a basis is suspect.  Bad data.  This is where assumptions are dangerous.  Something can become common knowledge through careful marketing or accidental means, yet have no sound basis.  An example is the theory of evolution.  It’s proposed as a theory, yet is generally accepted as a fact.  It might be a fact.  I don’t know.  I haven’t been exposed to the proof.

The core value of what I do professionally relies upon valid source [data].  Finally I remember what I was thinking when I entitled this post, “who’s afraid of the big bad [data] wolf?”.  It’s all about bad data.  Foundation.  Source.

The society in which I live seems to be built on a basis of bad data.  Conclusions or definitions of things like success, beauty, worth, and value are vapor without real substance.

I stand in stubborn defiance and cling to the quest for source, with my own assumption that whatever conclusion(s) may be drawn will be closer to valid, and therefore have some real meaning.

Understanding, for whatever reason, is a hunger of my soul, and I am seeking the peace that passes understanding.  It is attainable, by some measure.  I’m sure of it.

from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard; and I have come for thy words

Many years ago I set my heart to understand.  It’s part of my driving force.  I don’t know why –it’s intrinsic to me.  I haven’t gotten very far.  Or rather, the farther I get, the more I realize how little I know.  I’m very slowly putting the pieces together.

…limitless, undying love which shines around me like a million suns…

seeing things differently

I am always looking for deeper understanding regarding this portion of breath I’ve been given.  Probably I’m late to the party, but it occurs to me that so often we (going grandiose here with a sweeping generalization) get caught unawares and find ourselves stuck in thoughts that we accept as truth without ever questioning from whence they come.  If we were to stop for a moment, before we think the thought, or rather, before we finish the thought and experience the associated emotions that accompany that thought, we just might realize that there is no foundation in that thought, and it can therefore be dismissed.  Poof!  Gone!  Emotional impact averted.

Dr. Wayne Dyer mentions this very thing in Excuses Be Gone — referring to the Virus of the Mind as described by Richard Brodie.  There’s a word to describe this phenomenon. Meme.

A meme (/?mi?m/ MEEM) is “an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture”.

That’s all fine and good, but I can feed my brain with deep and rich words all the day long and never get anywhere.  I ponder these things, again and again, yet somehow I tend to miss the element that allows the information to sink in and become firmly rooted.  Probably this is a side effect of my general life coping mechanism, in which I remember hooks and tags that will lead me to the information I need, because keeping an active reference open at all times is simply overwhelming (for me).  This, also, is why I write!  Once I capture these thoughts, I can safely let them go, and therefore de-clutter my mind.

All that aside, it’s been a life-long hunger, this need to separate the wheat from the chaff, and get down to the meat of the matter, any matter.  Truth.  With a capital T.  Hence the persistent Why?

I’ve been swimming against the current.  It’s exhausting.  The preacher had it figured out.  It’s pretty much all spelled out in Ecclesiastes.  You can be rich.  You can be poor.  You can be weak.  You can be strong.  You can be well.  You can be sick.  You can be wise.  You can be foolish.  Ultimately, what matters?  We all, at some point, die.  This life, this breath, is our portion.  It’s all that we have.  It’s a gift.  A gift!

A gift is a beautiful thing.  It’s a treasure, to be enjoyed, not wasted.  It’s a smile to be shared.

Recently I found myself pondering this deeply, thinking outside the box, so to speak.  Like having a conversation with a young child.  Why are there stars? I have some beautiful memories of conversations like this.  All the why questions, from a young and beautiful soul, seeking wisdom from an adult.  Only this time, I was the young and beautiful soul, and no matter which angle I approached my question, the answer was the same, delivered in a wash of warmth and light, a glowing infusion of love.  It was a nebulous question, really.  Something about life, and how I should be living it.  With each angle, I would pose it another way.  What about this?   What about that?  Point.  Counterpoint.  For as many facets carved in a gem, I would approach from every angle I could imagine.  With every wash of understanding that flowed over, through and around me, I would laugh in delight as it sunk in.

There is nothing to worry about.  Nothing.  You are safe.  You are part of a love that spans the universe and beyond, from forever to forever.  Life is beautiful.  You are alive.  You are beautiful.  Let each moment’s focus be joyful, because everything is going to be okay.  Everything IS okay.  This is how life should be lived.  Eyes wide open.  Heart wide open.  Joyful.  Each moment a moment of giddy delight.