Sorry you guys.  This probably isn't the best New Years Day theme.  But I am still inspired by this subject!!   It is so interesting.  Please have patience.  We'll be into discussing tame things like Enlightenment again later in 2009, I'm sure.

So yesterday we walked into a Walmart.  Pardon, again, for those who don't think this is politically correct.  We walk in, look around, and I start thinking about that preposterous claim last week (oh was it only a couple days ago?) of falling in love with Everyone.  And looked around at all the bodies shopping and bustling and moving about and thought definitively,  "No I don't love anyone here."

First of all, ignore your Mind when it expresses itself in absolutes.  The word "everyone" is suspect to begin with.  We obviously don't love everyone.  We love some people some times.  Right?  Doesn't that feel better?  Doesn't that feel a little more accurate? 

But what still fascinates me is this.  Look around Walmart.  Look around the mall.  Look around the grocery store.  See the milling humanity, of which you are one.  Look at the bodies.  Fat ones, thin ones, crazy hair, coiffed hair, old coat, rich coat, hatted shopper, no-hatted youth, shopping cart pusher, arms-filled young mother, you know, Everyone.

When I look at people through Physical Eyes, measuring physical characteristics, there's often a dullness that sets in.  Some people call this First Chakra seeing.  First Chakra eyes.  You're in Physical Reality seeing Physical People.  Ho hum.  Yawn, yawn.  Where's the bliss-I-love-you now?  It's gone.  There's warts and ugliness and blemishes and fat and too skinniness and some sort of body odor. 

Ladies and gentleman, there we are at our base level!  I have a dream....said Martin Luther Centria.....to see the Beauty in Physical Reality at least 75% of the time.  I think some artist folks have this propensity.  They can look at physical form and see beauty morphing forth.  Just as it is.  In this moment.

For me, I have to deepen into intimacy with a human being before the love-juices start moving.  Some people take it to the next level of the Second Chakra and call it Sex.  Here's the place where we see people as physical objects and want to deepen into some sort of intimacy.  Ahhh....well I was going to use a slightly vulgar term....but will restrain, as it's New Years Day.  Our level of seeing deepens.  We begin to get relational.  But don't stop here!  Keep a'movin'!

Let's keep deepening.  I won't bore you with all the Chakra terms (who even knows if they're true?  They're just terms that describe a deepening or awakening into wider levels of Being, of more expanded ways of seeing.)  But when you past the Heart Chakra and move into the Oneness Chakra, that's when you can say something absolutely ridiculous like "I love Everyone" and it makes sense.  In that first chakra, it's ridiculous.  It's simply stupid.  We don't love everyone here.  We're usually appalled or bored or indifferent or fascinated with form. Even in that second chakra, we're just so often talking body parts. Or how someone has hurt us and how they deserve to be booted, shunned, locked up or scorned.   Ho hum.... Anyway....

So you're walking through Walmart and you're not thinking and you're feeling somewhat indifferent and watching your perception look dully at people.  This is the level beneath thought.  Or that which precedes thought.  You haven't deepened anywhere.  You're just Present, in the Now, and people are boring and dull, just like you.  Or let's say you're angry at yourself for something and you look around, seeing angry people everywhere.  Or, you're happy and you see happy people everywhere.  You believe that people are scamming you and sure enough....go to the counter!....you're scammed.  Walmart mirrors wherever you are.

What point are you trying to express, you ask?  I think there gets to be some point in our Chakra'd development where one notices "I don't love anyone" and THAT'S OK.  That is the enlightenment of the moment.  And then one's awareness expands and one falls head over heels in love with the most precious light of another being and expands in outwards to "I love everyone" and THAT'S OK TOO.  And it may not be some superior place to which we all must aspire.  (our Mind thinks it is, sometimes, doesn't it?)

The Enlightenment part of it is the allowing of all states to exist.  The lovey-dovey states, and the pissed-off humanity states.  Oh no!  We're not on safe ground anymore, we're talking about the "E" word....   But may I suggest that as we expand our awareness upwards and outwards, it becomes much more impossible to stay stuck in a limited perspective?  So when we become pissed-off or unloving, we smile and say "oh there I am again" but we're less likely to re-act from that place of non-love and limits?  

When we're seeing exclusively from a Chakra perspective, we're often stuck there.  Not moving, not free, not fluid.  When we're seeing with Awareness then the kaleidoscope keeps turning.  Moving.  Flowing.  And we're better able to choose the action which fits the Now.  (If we're looking for Enlightenment, don't look for rigid words describing anything.  Look for flowing, look for movement, look for rivers that change from ice to water and back.  That's where we'll discover a Truth that overlays both rigidity and flow....)

Here's to a 2009 where we shall love people and not love people, to rest in that awareness of "what is" while simultaneously flowing wide open through our Chakra'd world.  How's that for a toast?  :)

 

Can this just be a rambling kind of entry with no theme?  Unless, of course, a theme appears at the end of it.  We'll leave the title blank til later to see if something nests or hatches or appears with new fluffy feathers here on the windowsill of this blog.

OK, there's so many thoughts & ideas cruising around here you'd think it was a theme-park.  The merry-go-round of ideas just go constantly these days.  And half of 'em are so amusing I'm smiling all the time.  Thoughts about war and pestilence can't even get in.  Even imagined woes are barricaded.  Or maybe not barricaded:  there's simply more interesting things to ponder that the woes are probably off weeping on some back street.  They'll appear another day.  They usually do.

One thing I'm pondering is the way people sometimes respond to negatively phrased questions or blogs more actively than positively phrased ones.  And how this relates to the national media, our deepest and darkest desires (often hidden from ourselves like the homeless bodies of ourselves out there on dark and dismal streets, ignored) to be titillated and to explore the depths of areas without ourselves and the national culture where light seems not to shine.

I wrote two blogs recently.  One, about loving everyone.  Two, about not loving everyone.  I was sure, right away, that the not-loving blog would get the most hits.  Bingo!  It's fascinating, our propensity to explore the darkness.  Which may be way it should be.  Who knows?  Sometimes we have to dive deep into that darkness to shine our light-worker lights.  Speaking of being a light worker, isn't it interesting that you can write a blog declaring you're not a light-worker and have tons and tons of hits while someone who writes a blog "I am a light-worker" might get a ho-hum reaction.  Same with enlightenment.  If you declare enlightenment, people may not be interested.  They've heard a thousand enlightenment stories.  But declare your insistence not to be enlightened:  Bingo!   People are interested.

This is what I could say:  I am a light-worker, I am not a light-worker, I am enlightened, I am not enlightened, I love my TV, I do not like my TV, the world is round, the world is flat, life is good, life sucks, I love everybody, I do not love everybody.  And what is absolutely hysterical about all these former sentences parading around in this paragraph is this:  who is the "I" that is declaring all those preposterous things?  Who thinks these things anyway?  What an ego she is to declare anything at all!  So you watch some part of yourself declaring it's preferences and wonder "wow, amazing, and what next?  what preference will be declared in the next moment and will "I" have to stand behind it?"

OK, Thoughts, do you have anything else to say?  Before we do something like go outside?  It's too dark to go outside, Kathy, you're still in your pajamas.  I wonder what everyone else who's reading this is doing inside their houses, drinking naked coffee or whatever.  You're doing Maze writing now, you now.  I know....

Anyway, the Thoughts have gone strangely silent, so it's probably time to move forth into some other folk's blogs.  To see what newness will hatch in the next moment.  To see if the past moment will even be remembered.  Ahhh, here it comes, some more thoughts!  Sorry, people.  Now I am thinking about my inability to remember.  Watching a movie last night about Alzheimer's and wondering....will someday I completely forget everything?  Should I go back to memorizing Spanish verbs in an effort to keep the mind agile?  It's a lovely ability, not to remember things.  One forgets slights and annoyances and pissed-off encounters and even the fact that there are horrible things happening in the world, sometimes.  I can remember the Now quite clearly, thank you!, but there's memories of last week that refuse to come to the surface. And talk about childhood....that's some past life, isn't it? 

Before you get the idea I can't dredge up any memories, don't panic, it's exaggeration.  A literary ploy, most probably.  I can remember in great detail the walk with my girlfriend yesterday.  But if someone says "what did you do last Sunday?" all that surfaces is....I was going to say "nothing" but suddenly remembered driving our daughter to the restaurant last Sunday before she headed down to Wisconsin.  So never mind!!  Obviously it was some fear that wanted to de-rail this blog and send it careening down some mountainside called Alzheimers. 

So when you end a rambling missive, do you wait to see if anything else hatches?  Do you pause to see if the energy has abated?  Do you get up and start tap-dancing, just because the next random thought ( a memory nonetheless!) about tap-dancing as a child has suddenly taken over consciousness and is now hijaking the direction of the blog yet again?    

Janet  just posted an answer to this question and it took awhile to figure out....when the heck did Siona ask this question?  (turns out October 24, 2007). So I guess we're allowed to travel back in time & pick the questions we like and answer them, whenever we're so inspired.

Which is apropos, as this is a time-travel type question.  We're zinging backwards for a conversation with our previous self.  I'm excited.  Let's see what the two selves have to say:

Current Self:  Hello, back there, how are you doing?

Old Self:  Don't be silly.  You know how I'm doing.  I'm doing a month-long retreat here at home.  Shhh.....  it's a silent retreat..... please....

Current Self:  no, no. It's OK to talk, just for a few moments.  You're going to make it through the month!  You're going to do it!  Just relax, don't worry.  And you have NO IDEA what this year is going to bring.  You are going to be SO EXCITED at everything is that is going to happen.

Old Self:  please, shhhh.....  you're getting on my nerves. NOW is what is happening.  This moment is all that counts.  Who cares about the future?

Current Self:  You do.  You just don't know it yet?  Do you want a clue about what's gong to happen....?

Old Self:  If you must.  (sigh....)

Current Self:  Everything you ever dreamed is gonna come true!  You are going to start writing and sharing with people.  You are going to meet more people than you ever dreamed.  The world is going to open up.  You're going to meet people all over the world on an on-line community called Gaia.  Your creativity is going to jump start.  You are going to be fulfilled in ways you've been searching since....since forever.  This is the year.

Old Self:  you mean I'll never be unhappy again?

Current Self:  Not at all.  You'll be unhappy.  You'll be happy.  You'll be sad, you'll cry, you'll have all the same old emotions.  But something inside you will be fulfilled.  It will be like the empty space inside of you is suddenly....content.  So even while a thousand emotions and thoughts and feelings will continue to pass through, there will be something so fulfilled that....are you ready for this....you won't even want to be enlightened anymore.

Old Self:  get out of here.

Current Self:  seriously.

Old Self:  well you're wrong about that one. 

Current Self:  OK, keep meditating.  You'll see.  Actually, keep meditating & go so deep that you reach the bottom of that empty hole inside you.  Keep meditating and being silent until you don't care if you ever see another person again.

Old Self:  well thank you for your input.  That would be lovely if that came to happen, but I really don't care.  Seriously.  So skedaddle back into the future, please.  THIS MOMENT IS WHAT COUNTS.  Who cares what happens in the next one?  Adios, goodbye, toodaloo!

Current Self (to current self):  wow, you really can't go back and talk to previous incarnations, can you?  Because they need to learn what they need to learn.  You could tell them that the world is falling apart or that everything wonderful was going to happen.....and it wouldn't matter.  Because it's one step at a time.  (Shouting backwards to Old Self):  I love you!   Don't you forget that.  You're going to be fine....

(won't even say...I don't do these tagging games.  Susie Q tagged me & I love her so here goes....)

1) What do you love to do in your free time? 

Check Gaia.  Check email.  Go outside.  Snap photos.  Talk with friends on the phone.  Read.  Take walks in the woods.  Meditate.  Write.  (having a little trouble with the words "free time".  Isn't all time free?  I'm pretty lucky that so much of my time is unstructured and the job hours are flexible.  So things kind of blend into each other, a mish-mash of possibilities.)

2) What music helps you relax?

I don't listen to music that much.  (is this a cardinal sin?)  When my daughter was home, we listened to music 24/7.  I prefer the music of silence.  But whenever someone offers a song or video to share, I listen with great interest, and sometimes delight.   Laura shared this song/video from youtube on her blog awhile ago and I fell so head-over-heels in love with it.  It makes my soul shiver deep down.  Oh having an awful time trying to link it, so head on over to youtube and listen to the Fleet Foxes "White Winter Hymnal".  

3) What movie did you enjoy recently?

Would you like to know a secret?  I'm not sure this counts as a movie, but my husband and I have this silly little winter-time DVD fun happening.  For the last three years we've been buying old Dark Shadows DVD's and watching one episode after he comes in from ice fishing.  We have a glass of wine, or beer, or tea and watch Barnabas and Victoria and all the characters from this 1967 cult classic TV story.  We're on Collection 7.  (there's 40 shows per collection.)  It started out as kind of a joke....but we're hooked.  I feel like I'm re-living my childhood, watching this vampire show.  And when I tried to stop this winter ritual (several times) it's Barry who keeps insisting we continue. 

4) Who makes you laugh?

People here on Gaia make me laugh.  They say the funniest things.  It's really amusing.  I make myself laugh, watching stupid or silly things emerging all the time. 

5) Where to you go/do to recharge?

To recharge, for me, is finding the Center again.  And the center isn't a place, it's a.....feeling.  It seems a place of "home", an inner peace, a place-less place where everything just flows in and out.  When you get caught in a particular energy pattern, when you're captured by that pattern, it seems you're no longer in this place called Center.  You're in the pattern.  Then it's easy for confusion to burst forth.  So Life takes us into the energy patterns and we either stay aware (and Centered) or we fall head-over-heels into the pattern.  Re-charging has to do with finding Presence again, being in awareness, connecting with an inner knowing. 

P.S. the picture is for Susie Q because she probably knows where it is!

You.

Every single one of you is a seed in a winnowing basket.  Hungry people cry on our planet and you are the food which nourishes hollow-eyed children, bone-thin grandmothers, desperate nursing mothers.

Sick ones suffer in pain and you are the one, with prayers and light and hope and encouragement, easing the wracking desperation.  With a single word or gesture of love, you soften the pain-filled moment, perhaps giving renewed confidence towards full healing.

You are the hope of the earth, crying lava tears within layers of crusted mantled cores.  You are the earth's hope, crooning lullabies to diving dolphins and wandering wolves.  You are  eagles soaring in the sunless sky; the weak sun attempting to shine through January clouds.  You are a burst of chickadees and swallows, chattering in the silver sky.

You are she who turns toward the worried and fretting, gesturing away fear.  You are he who whispers strength and encouragement.  You are the song and singer with hymns of peace and sustenance.  You move effortlessly through the Day's mirage, your presence itself easing, loving, unleashing shackled chains.

You are the hope of this planet and there's nothing to do but sink into the Knowing of Who You Already Are.  Speak from that centered whole, act from the confidence of your treasured gifts, move from the diamond glinting within.  Throw the winnowed seed of yourself high in the air.  Plant yourself in the Moment and fear not....the rain and sun cometh now.

So here we are on Gaia with our thousands of individual personalities.  So-and-so likes this, doesn't like that, wants this, doesn't want that, believes this, doesn't believe that.

Have you ever noticed (or witnessed in yourself) when someone tries to convince you to do or think differently.  What is your usual response?  Freaked out, "NO that person is wrong; I simply will not look at it that way" or flowing, "hmmm, might be some truth in that new perspective....maybe should try it....."

I think it's kind of funny to witness our boundaries and edges get prickly and challenged.  I had to laugh yesterday (in retrospect) when my boundaries were poked.  It had to do with ice fishing.  I have strong boundaries in place which say:  I do not ice fish.  You can ice fish.  You can have a lovely time.  Just don't ask or make me go sit out on 220 feet of water & fish for lake trout.  Final.  End of story. 

However, I have this crazy commitment to spend 365 days outdoors and blog about it and nothing else looked remotely interesting for yesterday's adventure....and my husband was unusually persistent....so off I went with him.  Not in any sort of spiritual flowing mood.  Irritated.  Annoyed.  

Off we ventured out on 220 feet of ice (see actual physical story at http://centria.wordpress.com/ ) and it was just fine.  The Mind had just constructed another story.  Saying who & what it was.  Drawing lines.  Throwing down gauntlets saying:  Don't step over these boundaries.  Refusing to budge.  Well, trying to refuse to budge anyway. 

I think many of us put out strong boundaries in certain arenas, and less stringent boundaries in others.  Some of us have electric-chain fences in certain emotional areas and surf the tide in others.  We often maintain rock-hard beliefs or opinions in one area (such as what we'll physically do) yet turn to a mush of lovey-dovey dissolving of boundaries in other areas. We flow here; we dam the river there. 

I'm coming to believe that it's a dance between maintaining and dropping boundaries.  We maintain them, perhaps, in an effort to be true to an individual self, an inner knowing, a set of internal preferences.  We often need to say clearly, "This is who I am.  This is the separate beautiful me.  I am not everything; I am limited, and it's OK."  We express what we like and don't like.  We're individuals with amazing edges and bodies and faces and desires and expressions. 

Yet, there's also a time in which we can expand beyond those pre-determined boundaries and explore the Infinite which exists.  We can go ice fishing.  We can practice writing in a different way.  We can learn to like tofu.  We can become so much more than we've ever envisioned or dreamed.  We can realize a Oneness which exists, which somehow knits together the individual selves and the Infinite. It's a question of perhaps being aware of when the time is right to strengthen; when the moment appears to release and surrender.

So....happy dancing between forming boundaries of self and dissolving them.  It's a tango, a waltz, a wild hip-hop gyration.  Just listen to that music!

Did anyone else cry today?  Is anyone else plumb worn out from weeping watching the Inauguration of Barack Obama?

Oh my, oh my....(oh please stop it, tears, just for a few minutes, will ya?)  wasn't it grand??  I am wanting to dance up to the stars and back in ecstasy.  Because we've gone & done it.  As a nation we've elected someone who's bringing many of us hope.  Pride.  Joy.  Re-dedication to our principals. Renewed energy to carry on.

I think it's more than just Barack.  Although he's awesome.  And I think he's awesome for many reasons, but mostly because he's seemingly a thinking compassionate person.  He may not be perfect.  He's just a guy.  But he's also carrying a little bit of magic, especially for those of us who have felt clobbered in recent years, unheard, underground, pushed away by a (seemingly) more reactive conservative "anti" political voice in this country.

And he's black AND white!  I love that the most.  I don't like when people say he's black.  He's BOTH.  A black daddy and a white mama = someone who points towards the possibility of moving beyond black and white thinking.  Our thinking has to mature into the grayness and depths and beauty of our possibilities.  Our thinking has to move beyond boundaries which separate, which label, which destroy.  Can we discover a new way of thinking which isn't so reactionary, isn't so derisive?  Can we call in a host of many-viewed advisers to guide us in this new world of Today?  Must we continue on with the same attitudes and beliefs as yesterday? Or can we slide through into something new, something beyond black and white, something shimmering with possibility?

Can we choose to dialogue with all the different factions, seeking consensus rather than war?  Can we talk and express ourselves and share until we break through all sorts of invisible borders and realize the Oneness of which we are? 

Can we?  Can we?

Today we're one step closer than yesterday, aren't we?  Let's all look inside ourselves and see what WE can do to help.  It's not just one man.  It's all of us working together that can help create something more beautiful, something more shimmering, something which catapults us beyond our limits.  Let's do it, shall we?

The oldest of all lullabies is this.  Lean forward closely and listen.  Shhhh.....  Do you hear?  Can you even begin to hear those tinkling notes, the rhythm of a forgotten song, the way She strummed on the lyre of your heart so gently, so gently?  

Do you remember just before birth?  How She floated towards you in golden shimmery gowns, crooning that crystal song so beautiful, so haunting.  The notes entered your soul as pulsating heartbeats of light and you breathed yourself forward into the womb of creation through her lullaby, through the wordless words of her song.  

Later, you'd wonder, as you floated in the embryonic mist.  You'd wonder why you knew something.  Why you remembered something.  Why senseless things made utter sense.  Why you understood down to your web-like fingers and toes that You and the Mother were One.  The world might dance you apart, but the lullaby would never hush a bye, hush away.  Instead it would call you through foggy cells and tentative crawls and hesitant syllables, never deserting completely, never stealing away.   

Sure, you forgot.  Everyone forgets the lullaby.  The trick is remembering.  You'll be suddenly twenty or thirty or sixty years hardened by bone and skin and the challenges of trying to reconcile irreconcilable things.  You'll be sitting in a cafe and the sun shadows sliver across the table and suddenly the song sifts upwards onto the foam of your latte and you'll gasp in the sudden beauty of Remembering.  Except you can't quite remember Her.  You just remember the Song, which is now somehow mixed into the dream of this present moment, this coffeed sip, the slats of sunlight.  Your heart wants to break from the beauty of it all and you utter new names, attempting explanation, attempting clarity.  You might call her:  God, or Life, or All, or Allah, or Dream, or Coffee, or Mother.   

It doesn't matter.  The words are the syllables of the lullaby returning to you, coming up from the dream of before-birth, when the shimmering song moved you towards the igniting of opposites, of sperm and egg, of the seeming impossible.  

Shhhh..... Listen.  Can you hear her now?  Can you feel her cradling you in the nighttime of your sorrow, your imagined failures, your tears?  Hush a bye, into Me, hush a bye, into Me, crooning words filling the fissures in your heart, tenderly wiping furrowed brow, brushing heavy dust from your tired spirit.  Let's rock awhile longer, shall we?  Mother's never left you, never left you, never left....

Gaia?  Can I have a little rant here?  Please.  A rant is required immediately and this space seems available.  If you're in a tentative mood, you may want to move away and look for a more cheerful blog.  

OK.  Here's the scoop. (not a snow scoop.)  As many of you know I'm doing this 365 day commitment to spend time outdoors every day for a year.   And write about it.  And take pictures.  Lovely idea, right?  It's something like Day 39, a fact I wouldn't know, except it pops up on wordpress daily, so it's handy to remember.  

Every every single day, without fail, the Mind starts its litany:  There's nothing to do outside.  I don't want to go outside.  There's nothing to write about.  There's nothing interesting to write about.  No one will want to read anyway.  I have nothing to say.   

Blah, blah, blah.  The Mind carries on unceasingly every single day and I'M SICK OF IT!!  Because, unfailing, every single day, I go outside and something interesting appears and a blog appears and even if it doesn't entertain anyone else, it entertains me and my family.  The Mind is WRONG!  And I am sick to death of having to listen to this every single day.  

Here's my question to you folks.  I have learned that almost everything has a purpose.  There's a gift hidden within everything.  There's gold in the river.  There's beauty in the rain.  There's gifts in the clouds.  Seeds grow from shit  (i.e., compost, if we want to be polite.)  In every challenge, one can usually find a silver lining.   Yes, yes, yes.  

So what's the gift in thoughts that tell us, repeatedly, things that are simply not true?  
I could answer this question myself, if I were not so damn irritated with having to jump over this hurdle like a long-distance racer every day at this time.  I am thinking of the hundreds of thousands of people right now who are probably listening to their inner voices saying every single day, "You won't be able to get a job.  You're gonna starve to death.  You're gonna be homeless" and in light of that, my own inner nay-sayer doesn't look so important.  But it's the same principal at work.   

I realize we can choose what inner voices to listen to.  Yes.  I also do not believe in putting a noose around thoughts and killing them randomly just because they're irritating.  In the Byron Katie tradition, if you look at them deeply enough, you often see that it's simply a mental projection.  It's not true.  And yet, so often, there's a part of us that isn't willing to let go of that thought....yet....for whatever reason.  When you see that, the thought usually disappears:  poof!  

So there's a gift here in having to go through this inner game every single day.  I simply haven't yet fathomed the gift.  So it's time to get dressed in warm clothes, go outside and wait and see what blog presents itself.  Because it does.  Every single day.  

Thank you.  I do appreciate you guys.                  

What's the number one truth of the universe? (Yeah, like, right, as if I know....)

Nonetheless, the number one truth of the universe is this: Everything Changes!

It's a fundamental law, a yin/yang reality. I suspect quantum physics verifies this. We know this intuitively. Change is constant. It's a paradox, to be sure, and one our conscious logical thinking mind sometimes thinks it understands. But I'm not so certain other parts of our mind truly grasp this basic truth on a sensuous (sense-filled) level.

Picture a chart. Picture a continuum that starts on the ground level and rises to the peak, then falls back to the ground level. There, we've charted CHANGE. We've mathematically captured it. Isn't it pretty? The flow of life. Up it goes, then down it falls. Up it goes again, and down it flows. Like waves in the ocean. Like most things in life.

Another way of saying this more concretely is: What comes up, must come down.

Here's where I think we often challenge ourselves. We're going up that mountain of creativity and we're happy, happy. We're creating! Life is good and happy and zinging. We're in the abundant phase. The energy is moving us to greater heights. Hurray! We're at the mountain top! The world is ours!

(At this juncture picture: the world economy at its zenith. Money flowing everywhere. The love affair of one's life come true. The seed grown into a lovely squash in all its glory. The child graduating from high school. The new car with so very few miles. The lovely job. The sunny skies. Fill in the blank _________ with your favorite expansive experiences.)

Returning to the chart of the continuum, at first we have the seed of an idea. Then the energy moves upwards to fertilize the seed, to hatch the egg, to come to fruition. Ahhh, beauty. Ahhh, joy!

What happens now is where we so often falter. We cling to this first burst of creativity, when the wave of life is now contracting. Down we go. Down it contracts. It contracts because something new is dying to be created. (Pun intended!)

In this contraction, if we don't ride it, if we don't allow it, if we don't accept it.....we so often suffer. We want the previous exhilaration of the mountaintop, of the expansion. WE DO NOT WANT TO CONTRACT. We somehow don't realize that the contraction is vital before the next newness births.

What to do, what to do??? Ride the wave, dear lovelies, ride the wave. (I am talking to myself as well.) Any resistance at this point prolongs the creative process. Any resistance keeps us on that slippery slope trying to scramble back up hill instead of gracefully moving our feet back to the earth.

Anyone ever have a baby? If you fight those contractions, labor can last for a very long time. If you flow with them, if you relax into them, the birthing process stretches into something which allows a beautiful new child to slide its way out of the birth canal.

Another way of saying this (how many ways are there of saying this?) is that the contraction is simply the releasing of the old for the new. If we stay attached to a previous ideal, we're not getting all our vitamins. (oh, goodness, sorry, certainly didn't mean for this metaphor to slip in!) But it's true. Life is comprised of vitamins of experience. And we need each of them. We don't need all Vitamin C or A or D. We need our multi-vitamin. And the less time we spend grasping tight-fisted to a single vitamin or perspective, the more nourished we're gonna be.

In summary, if there can ever be a "summary" of this topic....let's return once again to the popular topic of "what is". What is is this: change happens. We go up the mountain and then we go down. It's all part of the whole. The energy moves up and then down. Many of us spend lots of time struggling on that down path. What if we change the lens of our perspective to see the down path as a necessary gift in the creation of something new? Instead of clawing with bloody fingernails to return to the previous peak, let's ski down that mountain swoosh, swoosh, swoosh! And when we fall, get back up, and (who knows?) maybe we'll even begin to anticipate our contractions?