You've caught me in a full outright lie.  I'm sorry.  It's just that, like so many things in my life, a straightforward  thing like a one year Anniversary on Gaia is not simple and clear-cut.  

If you were to spy the tell-tale words "Member since March 12, 2007" you might actually think that March 12th should be the official anniversary date.  And that it's approaching TWO years.  And that's a partial truth, but not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.....  

It happened this way.  On March 12th I discovered Gaia, although it may have been known as Zaadz back in that past life.  (and even that fact, although I've convinced myself of this truth, it is probably another fib.  Because I have a vague indistinct memory of joining Zaadz even prior to that under a different name and email address.  But I know for sure I didn't stay there long under whatever pseudonym presented itself at that time.  If it happened at all.  If it wasn't a dream...)  

So, back to March 12th, 2007.  I joined, wrote a blog, and left.  I wrote about Looking at the Selves.  Guess what it was about, dear friends?  Voice Dialogue!!!  You knew that, didn't you?  Even though the words weren't ever mentioned, that was the gist.  About six people looked at it and yawned.   

I yawned, too, unable to figure out more about this strange social networking site and departed.  Meandered on back to live journal where I had four readers.  Husband, daughter, son and one friend.  Stayed there for almost another year, either having forgotten or unable to attempt another blog here.  For whatever reasons, the Universe said "no".   

On February 2nd last winter, after a month-long January retreat here at our house, an amazing inner journey with many revelations, I suddenly felt called to turn back to Zaadz.  Except it wasn't Zaadz anymore.  Look what happens when you sleep!  It was Gaia and it suddenly seemed very intriguing.  I wrote three blogs in February.  No one really read them.  No one commented until March when it suddenly occurred that one must ASK people to be friends here.  

And the rest is history.  I asked 15 random people, "Pretty please will you be my friend?" and only one declined to reply.  And finally a few random others began to say, "Can we be friends?" and pretty soon there was a big love fest going on.  Because that's what this place is to me:  a big love fest!  A mostly unconditional love fest!   

I love Gaia.  It has given me so much during the last twelve months.  And all of you....every single one of you reading this....are beautiful individuals.  One of the many selves in the All that we are.  See!  I brought it back to Voice Dialogue....ha ha !!  Thank you guys, every one of you!

When I'm flowing and not holding on to a hard definition of self, not stopped by feelings of insecurity or guilt or shame or despair or other suffering, it's easy to love 'most everything and everyone.

So there's this huge outpouring of love, and when you meet the energy of someone who's angry or annoyed or pissed off or doesn't understand you, there's simply a feeling of love which washes over in that direction and you rise to meet his or her resistance with an inner hug or beam of light.  Or you meet someone who has been cruel or angry and you see beneath that outward striking-out to the pain & insecurities underneath and your mother-heart leaps to include even that.  And you wonder at the largeness of love.  The ability of that unconditional love to wrap itself around even murderers, rapists, death, pain, a wounded heart.

When I quit flowing so expansively and get into the body of this human being, this Kathy, and feel all the edges of her (or all the imagined edges of her) then it's not simple.  It's downright not always fun.  Here is the realm where hurt and suffering and pain lives.  And inner voices which snipe at the Otherness of different people.

Ahhhh, here in the confines of a human body, in the perhaps contracted expression of wanting to be a Self, of needing to be a Self, we push others away all the time.  We judge YOU as being too ____________(fill in the blank) in order to support our inner insecurity which needs to be more _______________ (fill in the blank.)

We listen to our inner critic and judge labeling, cornering, limiting the Other.  Because what happens when the Other is limited?  We almost convince ourselves that we are OK.  Almost.  Because, in the end, I think, we can never convince ourselves of our basic worth when it's pitted against another part of the Larger World.  No, we need to first remember our worth, and surrender to the true love of it, and then what do we see?  An outer world which reflects the love of which we are!  Everywhere.....

Folks say you get to a place of no-self when you're "enlightened".  I think we realize a place which already exists.  A place where self & no-self dance together and apart.  So now you see a "self" and now you don't.  Look: a self!  Look:  no-self!  And can you love all the parts as they come into awareness? 

if you're enlightened
find the unenlightened part of yourself
and wear her like a sweater.
see if you can
without running back to protect
yourself.

if you're not enlightened
put on your enlightenment like a jacket.
I dare you.
Wear yourself warm
in the wintertime of your searching
or not searching.

If you've shattered the self into a thousand pieces
grab one piece, any piece,
and wear him for a day.
for an hour.
grab the opposite of what the Mind commands
and find the truth nesting within
like a pregnant hummingbird.

If you've found the Everything you are,
drink the red wine of it
like christ
break yourself open against the moment
raw, naked, vulnerable

dare to forget
what awakeness feels like

dare to remember
the next mask you wear....
dare to wear all masks
nestle between the eyes staring out....
wear the "I" without flinching
all of it.
every last edge and personality,
every last commandment.

dare to take every concept
consecrated sacred:  being,
moment, all, enlightenment, Oneness,
flowing....
dash them against the tombstone of
your not-knowing
without clothes
and stand fiercely in the truth
only you can know
in this dappled sunrise,
this yolk of breath.
These scrambled eggs.

It felt so good to mostly turn off the computer for four days and turn inwards toward meditation, prayer, centering.  I don't know about you guys, but sometimes my inner guidance says:  this is what you should do now (whatever this may be).  Often it's seemingly more convenient to lock that guidance in some inner room and ignore its voice.  This time I decided to listen.

Such peace in silence.  Much time spent outdoors enjoying the mid-winter snow and varying temperatures.  I turned to piles of unread magazines, paperwork, books.  The silence became stronger than the thoughts.  The silence grew until it became a living essence again, the force leading the show.  It always does, I suppose, but it's easy to forget.

I've watched people make silence into another Idol, another concept which separates us from the All.  Most of us don't need to worry about that, though, as many of us could benefit from some of Silence's seamless edges.

Physical-reality friends emerged from the background.  Actually they started coming forth on Saturday, before this four-day mini-break.  A good friend, Jan, showed up with a Valentine's Day card for tea.  What a delight!  Another friend, not seen nor heard in four months, phoned.  Another friend from California and I began to re-connect in deeper ways.  Lovely.

Last night, finally, after burying Valentine's Day wishes to the Earth under a rock beneath the snow (in my other outdoors blog  I requested people to write Valentine's messages to give to the earth and a few people complied) I checked my Gaia email.  There was a note that my dear friend Liza had decided to leave Gaia.  Two reactions arose.  The first one came out of the Silence:  I am glad she is doing whatever she needs to do.  The second one came ragged out of my heart during the night:  sadness and pain. 

Why does it hurt the heart so much to lose some of our friends here on Gaia?  Perhaps there's as many reasons as there are people.  The preciousness of our exchanges shines like a light inside... 

I think we must be willing to feel hurt and pain, instead of pushing it away.  When we love deeply, we must be willing to allow it all to rise.  With the addition of Silence, it arises with a certain watching, a certain detachment.  It feels like a hologram where both joy and pain exist.   

It seems always to return to the place beyond our conceptualizations.  Some people say we don't have to do anything to realize who & what we are.  I don't agree.  Often we have to to do something to realize we don't have to do anything.  Sometimes our deepest inner self will say, "go meditate" and other times it will say "play on the computer all day."  It's the deepest inner voice (the voice married to silence) that Knows.  The place where concepts disappear:  that's where our next footprint appears.

This is probably going to be a babbling blog, sort of like a babbling brook.  Might not even be as pretty as a brook reflecting silver in the sunshine.  But perhaps as noisy.  You know how noisy a brook sounds in the summertime when you're admiring the rushing water and stones and ferns and leaves.  Sometimes you may have packed a picnic lunch (let's say a red pepper hummus sandwich on sesame Ezekial bread) and you watch the crumbs falling on your jeans.

You're wearing jeans because the brambles cut your legs when you wander through the underbrush behind the Eagle's Pond. The brook feeds the pond, winding around in a meandering semi-circle until it reaches the headwaters. You found out last week that a neighbor down the road calls the pond "Timmy's Pond".  Isn't that fascinating that ponds have different names given by different people?  We don't even have any clue the many names humans have given a place in nature.

Now I am starting to regret writing this blog here on Gaia because it's sounding like an Outdoors blog.  And this could come in handy someday when I'm desperate for outdoor material.  No matter.  I'll steal it back.  Anyone who reads in both places will nod their heads understandably and say, Yes, she's desperate.

Back to TImmy's Pond.  My neighbor called to urge me to keep taking photos.  She viewed one of my pics in the local newspaper (no big deal, my husband's the editor) and listed two additional photo possibilities.  (I just decided after writing this blog to post the picture which appeared in the paper.  It might be the wrong decision.  Obviously the picture makes us think of winter...and this is a summer blog.  Oh well.  Making decisions can be tough.)

The moon-rise over the bay and a river where natives brought Father Marquette in a canoe in the 1600 or 1700's were her two photo suggestions.  Apparently a large slab of copper rested in a canoe navigated by the Ojibways and tipped over as the natives and the Father explored the river.  When they returned to retrieve it the following year, it was gone.  So sayeth the neighbor.  She said I should photograph this site.  Hmmmm....

Back to my photo.  She said, "I know where you took it."  I held my breath, wondering if she would go into a tirade against trespassing.  Then she lowered her voice and almost whispered, "You took it at Timmy's Pond, didn't you?" 

I hesitated and said, "You mean the pond at the end of the road where the eagles sit in the trees?  I call that the Eagle's Pond."

"Yes, yes!" she replied enthusiastically.  She's about 90 years old and her voice sounds a little scratchy,  "When my grandson was little, he would disappear for hours on end.  We always knew where he would be.  Fishing at the pond. That's why we call it Timmy's Pond."

So there you have it.  From the 1960's this pond has been called Timmy's Pond.  I've called it the Eagle Pond since the 1980's.  How many other names does this pond carry?  And what are the stories it hides?  I wonder if you sat really really still along its banks, perhaps along the babbling brook in the summertime with a hummus sandwich, it might begin to tell its stories.  Stories of fish and eagles and picnicking visitors and a boy named Timmy.

What do you think?

Our Artist's Way meeting was cancelled today.  More accurately, I cancelled it.  Because our driveway was filled with a foot of new snow and our tractor battery refused to charge.  Therefore, my husband could not plow before work.  Off he roared with his four wheel drive truck, insisting that I don't even attempt to drive through with my meager front-wheel drive car.

OK, we've been a wee bit challenged this week.  First, some plumbing piece rusted out under the kitchen sink.  Water everywhere.  Luckily, that proved easily fixed.  Next:  humidifier rusts out on basement woodstove.  Water everywhere.  We're in the process of finding a replacement.  Next, Barry's car refuses to start in front of the bank downtown yesterday afternoon.  Cost of that little breakdown still undetermined.  This morning:  battery refuses to charge on tractor.

I decided not to make more work for him by trying to get out the driveway.  If I got stuck...it wouldn't be good.

So I stayed home and caught up on Artist's Way homework.  Would have been very delinquent in the homework assignments anyway.

I don't like some (many?) of the questions.  All of us in the group have experienced some resistance to some of the assignments.  As usual, when I read the following assignment my first reaction was balking:

List five things you are not allowed to do:  kill your boss, scream in church, go outside naked, make a scene, quit your job.

I thought:  of course we're allowed to do most things.  Except maybe kill your boss.  But I decided to do the assignment anyway.  The first two responses started coming up slowly and reluctantly but by the time I was finished the energy was soaring.

Here's my list.

1.  angrily scream and berate just because that feeling is passing through me.
2.  Walk naked downtown  (am I suppose to want to?)
3.  Go to India or Ecuador right now.  Today.  This afternoon.
4.  Die, just yet.
5.  Let dishes pile in the sinks and on the counters until they lie all over the floors and strew out the front door.  To let dirt and scum and messiness fill the house.  To make trails through the mess and not even care.
 6.  To quit making dinner every night.
7.  To eat 16 whipped cream filled croissants (add other fat-filled sweets, meat and breads.)
8.  To eat two loaves of sourdough bread slathered with butter
9.  To fill this notebook with everything I'm not allowed to do.  

**Oops, couldn't stop at five!***

So what are YOU not allowed to do (or allowing yourself to do)?  No wild sexual fantasies or death threats or horrible things, please.  I am not allowed to publish them.  I will delete them (poof!) without a conscience.    I don't think I'm allowed to write this blog, but am doing so anyway....