A mud puddle can reflect the most beautiful colors.

Maybe Siona asked this question before.  How are you a different person off line?   What different attributes (or weaknesses....I dare you!) come to the forefront when you're not sittin' around typing away in the realm of writing and words?

I've been thinking about this lately.  And maybe even Nicole and I talked about it on the phone a couple times.  How our on-line personalities may only show a certain slice of Who We Are. 

Here we're given a blank piece of screen on which to explore, to create, to show certain aspects of ourselves.  And how in some ways we can go verrrry deep in this computer-world and get down to the nitty-gritty of intense connection.  We can perhaps say "I love you" so much easier than in everyday physical encounters.  We can say "hugs!" and yet perhaps we hold back when our neighbor walks by. 

It's an interesting slice of world out here.  But are we really seeing the three-dimensional aspects of our Gaia friends?  Or would we be surprised in person to discover there are other traits which haven't come across in the community?

Let me see if I can answer this question personally.  Hmmmm.  Well, I am sometimes a MUCH quieter person off-line than on-line.  I listen more than I talk, most often.  In fact, for dozens and dozens of years it has seemed like I was the one listening most often in phone conversations and in face-to-face meetings, not as often sharing the depths of who I am.  Which is why this computer space has been such a godsend (perhaps to many of us?) because we can finally, finally, share some of the deepest nooks and crannies of our hearts and thoughts with people who seem to understand.

In writing it feels intriguing sometimes to use a lot of exclamations points!!!  Like, isn't Life exciting??!!  But, truly, I wonder how often I say anything with an exclamation point in physical talking reality.  Not too often!!  Usually it's more like periods, commas or question marks.  But not exclamation points.

It's been interesting writing the wordpress blog this year because friends and family are finally meeting the Writing Kathy and at least a couple of them are going, "Who IS this?  And what has she done to our Kathy?  Why is she writing like that?"  One is saying..."Why can't she be more serious and talk about deep things?"  and the other is saying...well, heck, I'm just projecting into a story of what they might be saying.  But it has taken some in-person friends awhile to get used to the on-line person.  Who doesn't even feel necessarily like the same voice which talks on Gaia.

So?  Any thoughts?  Do you all feel like you come across exactly the same?  Or different?  Or a combination?  Just wonderin'. 

Oh I love this question!  Where would you CHOOSE to spend your life?  That's the word that popped out at me.  Where would you CHOOSE?

Do other people get to choose where they wanting to live their lives?  Oh, lucky.  I think my kids look like they are choosing where to live.  Kiah's been to Washington DC and Europe and now Manhattan testing the waters.  Christopher has a shanty in San Diego after a stint in Ann Arbor.  (ooops, I do not mean shanty.  I mean teeny little apartment that I get to visit next month for the first time, hurray, hurray!)

Back to CHOOSING where one gets to spend his or her precious life.  My life doesn't seem to work like that.  It's more of a backwards upside down kind of thing.  Here's what happened when I was twelve years old.

We hopped into the family station wagon looking like folks from a TV sitcom.  Mom and Dad in the front seat, sister and two brothers in the back.  We were always cruisin' round the U.S. of A in our family station wagon.  This time we were headed across the bridge to Michigan's Upper Peninsula.  Nothin' like the Grand Canyon, but we were heading way north and west.  Five hundred miles away from our nice sedate small town and farmlands in the Thumb of Michigan.

So we get to our destination after twelve painful hours in the station wagon (who knows?  maybe it was two or three days?) and pulled up in front of this nice little
A-frame cabin in the woods.  No electricity.  No indoor plumbing.  The temperature lingered about 93 degrees.  Two billion mosquitoes and black flies buzzed incessantly.  You couldn't go outside without welts forming from bites. It was agony.

My mom and I sat inside with our novels.  Dad and the two brothers ran free in the woods, excited to explore the outdoors.  I wrinkled my nose at every bathroom visit and prayed to God (and here is where you might want to listen as I attempting to answer the question):  GOD, PLEASE GET ME OUT OF THIS GOD-FORSAKEN LAND.  I HATE IT HERE.  PLEASE GET ME OUT OF THE U.P.!!!

So where does God decide little Kathy should live for her WHOLE LIFE?  You got it.  My God is apparently a big jokester.  A prankster.  A "ha-ha you silly little thing, you have just uttered the magic words."  Guess where you're going to live? 

Less than eight or nine years later I was following the love of my life (we were young and in love and wanting to go live simply in the back woods....you can see I momentarily lost my mind completely...obviously part of God's "plan"...) 

So here we are, 30 years later.  I can't tell you how many years I moaned and cussed and fought and cried wanting to be elsewhere.  Somewhere with lots of people and coffee shops and bookstores and Lots to Do.   Until Suddenly.  Suddenly you wake up and find yourself in a beautiful land among incredible trees and animals and fascinating Things to Discover in the woods.  You find yourself almost a bit enamored with the land, the silence, the Nothing to Do.  You find yourself sinking into the emptiness, that fear of nothing, that lodged deep in the center of your being. You find yourself thinking....hmmmm....well this isn't quite so bad. 

Hey, you say, maybe I'll agree with God.  Maybe I'll choose to live here. 

Ha ha, God!  Gotcha!

(This is where God really laughs.  Got you!  he says.  And now you can spend an entire year of your life going outside and blogging about it.  Tell the world how much you love the place.  C'mon...I dare you.)

I am completely asleep.
A person thinks she's writing this poem.
A person thinks she split wood.
The wood splits separate from the splitter.
The splitter lies dormant, a hunk of machinery
heaving in and out.
Person and wood: 
cleft in two.  

Thoughts running around between logs;
separate thoughts, cunning thoughts,
thoughts of judgment sharper than the wedge.
Thoughts veiling wood, thicker than bark.
Beliefs rampant.  

Dreams of heat,
of smoke puffing sky, all separate.
Dreams of striking match, of fire.
Dreams of weight and creosote.
Dreams of frigid snowy mornings,
kindled desire, kindled rage, kindled self.  

I am completely sleep.
It's dark in here.
I long for fire to spark,
for logs to burn,
burn me back into themselves
back to that place
where you open the woodstove door
and know yourself to be
the seed of the growing tree,
the silver-edged axe,
the fire stoker
and the raging blaze.
Where fire and person unite in ecstasy,
the log burning Whole,
charring everything except the dance of flame.  

The fire longs for itself.
I simply write its orange words
of flame and ash.        

Meditation.

You close your blue or brown or hazel or night-black eyes and do a lot of nothing.  Or a bit of something.  You can ohhhhhhhhhmmmmmm......  You can groove with the silence.  (wow!  what a bundle of silence, man!)

You can spend hours observing your kundalini zingin' near the base of your spine or maybe up to your eyelids.

You can think.  You can try to stop thinking.  You can think some more.  You can think and come back to the silence.  You can look up at the clock.  "How many more minutes?" 

You can beg "who am i, am i, am i, am i, am i?" and listen to the answers "not that, not that, no, silly, not that!" until you're dead in the grave of yourself, clumps of dirt covering the coffin of your endless seeking.

You bliss out.  Or you fight and cuss and feel agony.  Next time:  who knows? 

Meditation is all brand new.

What is meditation anyway?  And why even do it?

You might not need to sit still in the silence.  You might be able to simply be alive, aware, moving through life! 

Sometimes when you meditate you get off the couch, shake yourself like a dog, and go about your daily life.  But meditation keeps "doing" you.  The dishes meditate you.  The meal meditates you.  The laundry meditates you.  Writing on the computer meditates you.  Thoughts come, thoughts go, but there's no difference between sitting on the couch in your eternal ohhhmmmmm and the next step right or left.

Meditate or not?  Who cares if you sit down?  Sometimes we need that couch to kind of calm things down, stabilize the world a bit in reality, and then...we get up and start meditating without doing anything.  Simply being aware.  Being.   

Such a silly word:  meditation.  What is meditation?  Being-in-life.  Aware. 

The clock ticking.  Bird wings.  Keyboard clicking.  Heart swelling up, tides swelling down.  Sun cresting the horizon.  Not meditating.

How many of you REALLY think you're a Self?   You know, a self, as in a person. 

Someone with predictable thoughts and characteristics and behaviors and opinions.  

Yep, I see a few hands raising wildly.  Thank goodness.  At least some of us are still more or less certain that we're selves.  But others of us look not-so-sure.  The meditator types are really frowning, aren't we?  And some of us are grumbling among ourselves because we know we're not selves, but the selves then sometimes seem to hijack us...and during those hijacking incidences...well we really don't know WHAT we are.  

Ahem.  Back to the Main Point.  

OK.  Some of us think we are a Self and some of us are pretty sure there's nothing inside.  You look, you look, you look.  What do you see?  NOTHING.  "Who am I?" you ask.  And everything has a "second" as Adyashanti says.  If you are aware of yourself thinking you are something...then awareness is the "first".  It always goes back to awareness.  

You are awareness.  WE are awareness.  That's it.  A field of awareness intersecting with itself.  

And in that nothingness is all the aliveness and zing and life and Everything of the universe.  It's not a dead nothing.  It's an alive nothing. 

I have surrendered to that alive nothing, and therefore I can write those words to you.  (ha ha, did any of you "get" that last sentence?  Who the heck said that?  Who the heck surrendered?  Who the heck wrote these words?  Don't you see...no one can say that.  Ever.  No one surrenders.  No one gets enlightened.  There's no "I" to do that in the first place!)  

Any one of you non-existent selves convinced yet?  A few more hands?   

OK, smart guy in the front row, what are you shouting about?  Who makes decisions, you say?  Who makes choices?   

Well the answer is obvious.  Awareness is all there is.  Awareness is choosing.  Awareness is running the show, saying what it wants to say, what it wants to do.   

It's like this.  Awareness is playing tennis.  The ball is in your court, and then the ball bounces to the other side.  We call that duality.  Just depends what side of the court the tennis ball decides to bounce.  Simple, yes?  Simply be the tennis ball wherever it lands.  

That's who you are.  The tennis ball.  The surrendered tennis ball, swatted by the racket of God.  (oops, sorry, didn't mean to interject the word "God".  God meant to write "awareness".  But blame it on Kathy if you don't like either other option.)  

So who writes these blogs?  It certainly isn't ME.  I am clear about that.  I may not be clear about 6 billion other things (excuse me, Awareness may not be clear about 6 billion other things) but I am clear that I am not the author of these blogs.  Do not write these words.  Do not believe or not believe anything you may may see.   

So who writes these blogs?  Who writes your blog?  Do you think YOU do?  Let's vote. Show of hands!   Who writes your blog?  

Let's count.  

It looks like the final tally is this:  Twenty of you think you write your blog, sixteen and a half are certain that you don't, and two people are opting for preferences-as-people writing the blog.  (I kinda like that view!)  One person says the dog writes it and another person thinks it's a committee of internal energies.  (Hey, like that one, too!)   That lady in the back row thinks the computer writes it.  And somebody over there thinks it's a conspiracy theory and the big wigs at Gaia actually write all the blogs and really there are NO people here at Gaia at ALL.  We're all illusions.  

Whatever you think, whoever you think is writing these blogs (let's not even get into who is READING them...good lord...please, sir, let's not go there right now.  Let's just stay with writing.)  

Thank you very much for stopping by today.  I can see that thirteen of you are sick of metaphysical discussions altogether and simply want to eat lunch.  Please come again!  All of you who don't exist! 

This is an update.  From my birthday blog when awareness woke up for a day.  And then stayed mostly awake (although back and forth) for the next three weeks or so.

And then I....zoom....snore!  snore!....fell back to sleep again into the world of Kathy.

It has been interesting listening to people give advice to Kathy's ego how she should proceed.  Every one has offered incredible depths of wisdom from their perspective.  Lots of precious offerings, some really pertinent.  But my ego has snarled at some of the perspectives, too.  (Oh, bad ego, down boy!  I mean, down girl!)

And it's because of this:  so many people offer such well-meaning advice.  And it sounds true.  But some of it doesn't resonate with the deepest truth of where Spirit seems to want to crack open like an egg.  And I TRY to follow their advice.  And end up more confused than ever.  Completely confused.  So confused that the brain feels like its the least enlightened soul in the universe.  A mass of confused ego.

About four or five days ago I stopped listening externally and started listening internally.  And here's what the internal voice said:

Go back to where you were in July.  Witness awareness being aware.

Simple.  Oh so simple!  But so elusive to do, until suddenly, once again, Kathy fell a bit to the background and "It" surfaced to the foreground.

I recommend this to everyone!  (ha ha, hope my recommendations don't confuse YOU.  If so, run away from this blog.  FAST!)  Just watch awareness being aware.  It's so simple and lovely. 

More and more minutes of the day (in between moments of "seemingly" being unaware...what a joke!) "I" simply observe awareness moving.  Awareness MOVES.  It's like a flow, a dance.  It is doing this ALL THE TIME and we are simply so caught up in this thought and this emotion and this perception and this feeling that we don't notice that there's something (the essence of who we are) and it's omni-present.

Every day I sink into the knowing a little more that THIS is who we are.  This awareness, this flowing.  And it feels like bliss is sometimes about the break in wave after wave after wave of ecstasy.  But it hasn't.  I have shooting spikes of ecstasy and they move on. 

Awareness doesn't seem to care.  It is SO fascinating.  Fascinated with everything that passes by, that moves in its sphere. 

It was an amazing moment earlier this week, listening to Adyashanti's CD's, when he began to describe this exactly.  About how awareness wakes up.  Not us. 

For me, awareness wakes up and then Kathy supercedes it with a lot of yadda-yadda-yadda.  Then, she relaxes, and awareness wakes up again.  Seems to be a rhythm going on, a dance. 

The most challenging times to stay awake seem to be when you're flipped out and depressed/confused/sad  or flipped out and happy/excited.  When I was trying to reconcile everyone else's definition of awareness and enlightenment I was just confused and couldn't be aware.  A few weeks ago my wordpress blog received front page recognition on wordpress and I completely (and I mean COMPLETELY) lost awareness to everything except being high and buzzed.  Yesterday it happened again with 2,000 wordpress hits in 24 hours (I think Ego is telling you this, trying to hijack this blog, you know), but this time Awareness maintained itself.  Not all day.  But much steadier.  It witnessed what was happening, but didn't lose itself in it entirely.

OK, just wanted to update anyone who might be interested.  It's an on-again off-again affair.  It's kind of like a tango.  Awareness whispers, "Will you dance?" and I trip over my feet but every once in awhile we're whirling around the dance floor without a thought. 

Tango, anyone?

Ahhh, it's been a lovely month of October.  Just blog, blog, blog.  You know, letting the inner voice carry on.  Say what the heck it wants to say, whenever it wants to say.  Blog, blog, blog.  (Don't anyone say blah, blah, blah!)

But it's all going to end.

Be over.

Goodbye.

Adios.

Fare thee well, you Gaians.

I'm going to be on a Mission during the month of November.  A real live Mission.  A Mission which is even beyond a Commitment. 

I am going to join many folks on the Diving Deeper site and write a novel.  (Ha ha, you're all laughing now, aren't you?  She thinks she's going to write a novel?  You're doubled over, aren't you?)

It's going to be NaNoWriMo month.  A slew of us (hey, maybe YOU?) are going to sit down and babble out a whole lot of words to create a novel.  Now don't you imagine we're going to be famous.  We're in for quantity, not quality.  We're going to be writing between 1,600-2,000 words a day.  We''re going to be Authors.

OK, OK, so we may never publish our babbling.  Does that matter?  We're at least going to produce The Book.  The Novel.  We're going to be able to let it drop in conversation or cocktail parties, "yes, when I wrote my novel..." 

So all this spiritual rambling is going to Cease.  It's going to be done.  You may see me signing in to Gaia, but it will be for novel-talk at Diving Deeper.  It will be for moral support.  For cheerleading.  For encouragement.  For a lifeboat!  A raft!  Anything that will help see me (us) through the month of November.

So, goodbye.  Adios.  Fare thee well.  May your Novembers go beautifully.  May you all become enlightened or not enlightened, as is your deepest desire.

(But, never mind.  I still have seven days to bore you with spiritual blogs, ha ha!  But just wanted you to know that I was disappearing for November.  Maybe.  I think so.  Well, truly, you never know.  But it looks that way right now.)

What do you do when you're bored?  asks Siona on the daily questions.

Oh this is a juicy question!  It's the juiciest question of the week. 

So many people wrote:  I never get bored.  There's too much to do!  There is this interest and that interest and another interest and this activity and that activity and another activity.  Only boring people get bored.

I must have been the most boring person in the Universe.  So boring that the geese and the deer and the mice wouldn't even provide entertainment.  So boring, so boring. 

It all started when we moved to the middle of the woods when we were barely out of our tender youth.  And Barry always had a million things to do like building houses, cutting down trees for firewood, fixing cars.  

And I...didn't...have...anything...to..do.  

Endless boredom.  Endless years spent thinking how to entertain myself.  Why did other people have 6,000 interests and projects and crafts they liked to do?  And I...didn't...have...anything...to...do.  

The restlessness was excruciating.  Painful!  Intense suffering!    Sometimes I felt like I was going crazy with restlessness and boredom.  (Then the kids came along and a couple part-time jobs and the pain of it abated somewhat, only showing up with PMS or at odd moments.)  

But here is the scoop:  Boredom and restlessness have been the greatest gifts of my life.  There you have it. 

This blog is really a Love Song to Boredom.   Because of boredom, I became deeply acquainted with emptiness.  In a way that would have been impossible while surrounded with people and projects and things.  Boredom led into the labyrinth of the emptiness.  It led so deep into the self that I became personally acquainted with Nothing.  

And that Nothing has become Everything.

So, if boredom decides to come visiting you, don't push her away.  Invite her in, tell her stories, entertain her.  But if she gets bored with you:  stop. Just sit with her emptiness.  Be bored.  Be deeper than bored.  You might fall in love with her too.

I would like to teach people how to wake up. 

But, hmmm,  that would involve me waking up first. 

Then you look at the answer you just wrote and think, "Do I really want to teach people how to wake up?" 

Well, of course.

Do you really?

Don't I?

C'mon, be honest.  Do you really want to teach people how to wake up?

I think I do, but maybe I don't. 

How do you feel when you think people aren't already awake?

Hmmm....good question...kind of like something is missing.  Doesn't necessarily feel too good.  Feels like I think I want them to know something that they don't already know.  (Got that?)

Is it possible that everyone is already awake?  Or that everyone is already awake that wants to be awake at this stage of their journeys?

Yes.

Is there a value to not being awake? 

There must be.  Otherwise we would all be awake.  Awareness obviously doesn't want to be awake.  Or it would be.  It wants to experience separate bodies, thoughts, beliefs & that whole hullaballoo.

So if awareness doesn't necessarily want to be awake, do you still want to teach others to wake up? 

Um, maybe not.

If awareness doesn't want to be completely awake in you, do you still want to wake up?

But awareness IS awake in me!  How could we not be aware?  It's silly thinking we're not even awake.  Silly, silly.

So you are awake.

Yes, but I forget that I am.

You could teach others that we're all awake and we forget we are.

Yep, and they could teach me, too.

Let's go back to the original question:  What would you most like to teach?

Maybe the only thing we can really teach is simply by being.  We are ourselves in all our amazing love and craziness and bitchiness and questioning and answering and acting.  Other people witness us, and that is simply the teaching.

Are you sure?

Not at all.  I am not sure of anything.  Not a single thing.  Except for awareness.  I am sure of that.  And every one of us is aware.  Who we truly are can't be taught.  Ever.  We already know.  We truly do.  We just sometimes think we've forgotten.

Oh if we only knew what kind of weather we would be today...

Will we be sunshine for sixteen of the twenty four hours?  Will we cry like rain for sixteen minutes?  Will our breeze come up and ruffle the sunflowers before dinner?  Will a hurricane swirl our heart for ten minutes before lunch? 

Will clouds come and go across our horizon?  Or will we be perfectly blue, the kind of blue that dances and hugs and twirls?  Will the autumn leaves fall at our feet and turn colors in the irises of our friends?

How can we know?  Each moment is completely new weather.  I suppose the weather forecasters are looking at our behavior yesterday, attempting to decide.  Maybe then can see there were some heavy things happening yesterday.  So they predict,   "Partly cloudy with a 60% chance of rain".

No wonder the weather forecasters simply miss the boat so often.  They have no idea how quickly storms can brew (although they can predict lows and highs, based on the way energy travels).  They have no idea how another person's sunlight can affect our own.  The hug of a friendly warm breeze can turn away a blizzard.

It's all possible.  There have been so many hugs this morning I'm predicting:  blue skies and warm weather!  But leaving it open for some clouds or teasing winds, as well.

In the end
the coming and going
are the same

you open your wings
not knowing.
Branch
or emptiness?

the tree bark infinite,
the sky your nest

you never know if
you're landing
or taking flight