Author: heartlandsoul

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On Standing Up and Opening Your Mouth

You try things
and sometimes
they work in real life
like they did in your imagination
And sometimes they don’t
The material is
shavings from your tender heart
mixed with tears of insecurity
and the fear
that you’ll never be loved
And you’re there
on stage
throwing that clay on the wheel
with everyone watching
and you hope
the pot you make
holds water
But sometimes it doesn’t
and everyone
can see your feet
getting wet
as the bottom falls out
everyone can see
what you missed
You have to be strong
to make your mistakes
in front of everyone
But sometimes
it works
and the vessel you shape
with your own shaking hands
is big enough
and tight enough
to hold
everyone.

A shot from last December’s concert with Mosaic Gospel Choir

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So Glad

It is funny how one would spend all this time trying to figure out what one’s heart wants … And go trudging down these labyrinthine paths toward the center of one’s being, one’s deepest, most closely guarded, secret dreams … And one could finally come to a door where one least expected to find a door, but would sense the unmistakable energy pent up on the other side … And so one knocks … And the door opens …

And what spills out is a whole bunch of baggage, issues, fears, negative beliefs, self criticism … As it turns out, one can bury one’s desires so thoroughly that it can become quite a challenge, bringing them out to the light of day, once one resolves to do so. 

The attempt to make a video of me playing a song I wrote on the piano took me down a long road into a thicket of anxiety that snowballed into all sorts of self-judging non-fun. It was just not coming out in a way I could stand. So I abandoned that project FOR NOW. But I made this video instead. 

This one I kept, because I set out telling myself that – as the saying goes – I was totally free to make the worst shit in the world, and I could delete it instantly if I chose. I mostly just wanted to put something between myself and my feelings of failure. But I ended up sort of liking what came out. 

This is like a doodle. I’m playing the keyboard in the garage, singing a tune I made up to convince myself that things were ok. And it must have worked, because now I sort of feel like they are. 

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Dying Every Day

I’m kind of into Easter this year. And by Easter I mean the overdetermined cultural phenomenon that includes Pagan celebrations of spring rebirth as well as the Christian holy day honoring of Jesus’ resurrection, with some woo woo “it’s the season of renewal” thrown in too. (And maybe one or twelve Reese’s peanut butter eggs. Wait, where did they go?)

Maybe I’m extra turned on about Easter because I spent so much of 2016 so far being ridiculously sick, and now that I finally feel like I’m solidly BETTER, I am about as excited and energized as if I’d literally crawled out of the cold earthy grave, dragging crocuses behind me. It’s also renewal time at home: we’re redoing some rooms, and I’m getting my own bedroom/office/studio, something I’ve been longing for over the past several months. My outer space is being repurposed, or in a sense, reborn. Maybe it’s putting me in the right frame of mind to tune in to this seasonal energy. 

On a different level – a heart level, not a head level – I have felt drawn back to the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection. 

I’ve been attending Althea Center for Engaged Spirituality for just under a year – I started going soon after the big Easter service last year. Apparently it’s traditional for them to have the Queen City Jazz Band come and lead a jazz-gospel service. !!!!!! What an incredible treat that was! 

 

And as part of the service, some scriptures were read that I haven’t heard for yeeeeaaaaaarrrrrrrrrs. It has been a while since I heard these passages straight from the Gospels, rather than the paraphrased modern version of events. And my heart being already an open state, the words went in deep, like a long needle, sharp and healing at the same time. 
This being an inclusive, interfaith community with a mystical orientation, the story of Jesus’ last moments was told not as an example of what a perfect being is like, but as a teaching about how WE can be — more humble, more trusting, more forgiving, more welcoming — and closer to God. 

There were lots of things said that I will be taking away to mull further. The most striking for me, though, was the phrase said to be Jesus’ last words as a human-embodied person:

And Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.” Having said this, He gave up the spirit. 

Luke 23:46,  Modern English Version

The minister said something like, What would it be like to begin each day with this declaration of faith?

But I also wonder: What would it be like to say this in each moment?

A Sufi perspective might be that we die with each exhalation of the breath. Who we were, dies. What was, dies. And to the extent to which we are aware of each moment, to the degree to which we are present and alert, we can let go of anything that shaped or controlled us in the past, and we can become new. We can be, in each new moment, innocent, childlike, free. 

If you want to be reborn, you have to die.

Of course most of us don’t want or need to experience total ego death in every moment. But in each moment, we do have the opportunity to die and be reborn. And there are some moments when, believe me, I am so grateful for that opportunity. I tend to take it only in extreme situations. But I think I would be a lot lighter, a lot less encumbered by useless mental and physical baggage, if I died more often. 

In some ways I have so much trust in the will of the Divine. Any seeming tragedy or hardship that befalls me – a heartbreak, a loss, an illness, a financial setback, a dream that dissolves into impossibility – even in the midst of my tears, I find myself saying, But it is God’s will, and I am learning so much from this right now. This is truly taking my soul where it needs to go. I don’t know where this dark path is leading, but God does, and I trust God. 

The external stuff, I’m often cool with (sooner or later). Everyday internal business, though, is a different story  … What am I doing here? I’m wasting my life. I’m ignoring my calling. I don’t even know what my calling is. Will I be able to pay my bills in the future? What if I never write a book / see the world / have children / make enough money to retire? What if I get sick or disabled when I’m old? I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing, but I’m sure it isn’t this. I’m going the entirely wrong way. I’m such a failure.

Into Thy hands, Father, I commit my spirit. 

When that verse was read, I thought of diving into unknown waters, leaping head first off a dock into a lake that might be freezing, that might have sharp rocks on the bottom, or be polluted with dangerous germs. This is something I regularly do. Though I can be very nervous, even scared, standing on the edge of that dock, the pull of the water on my spirit is so strong that I know I can’t do anything but dive in. To overcome my fear, or my resistance to leaving the “known” behind, I’ll often invoke a name of the Divine as I jump. 

Life can be like this. In so many moments every day, in big and small ways, I resist leaving the safety of what I know from the past. (The future, the moment that’s coming next, is scary. I could die. Or I could experience pain, and maybe I’ll WANT to die. Literally ANYTHING could be waiting to attack me in the moment that’s coming …) Instead of diving with a prayer on my breath into a stream of time that calls my soul inexorably onward, I hang on to the boards and have to be dragged off by the current while I distract myself from what’s happening. Because either way, it’s happening. But one way is exhausting, while the other is exhilarating.

Since Easter is all mixed up with multiple traditions anyway, I’m going to make an Easter resolution — or maybe call it a seed I’m planting in the wet, fertile soil: That I’ll remember this verse, this prayer, this mantra, that I’ll repeat it and try to remind myself of it whenever I’m afraid of the future. I’ll begin now. 

  

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Fog

For a random interlude …
You know, I love fog. It is my favorite weather phenomenon. Is that weird? It just seems utterly magical to me. Being in fog is like being in another dimension. It always seems to me like the literal veil between the worlds. 

Fog on a river is one of the many special subtypes of fog. These are some photos of the fog’s changing patterns over the Monongahela River valley near near where my mom and grandma live, in the tiny village of Isabella in southwestern Pennsylvania. It’s amazing to me that this wild foggy river is like three blocks from my grandma’s house. I used to lie in bed when I spent the night there as a kid, thinking about the river down there, out the window,   at the end of a long slope that spans several back and front yards. Then there’s a wide, muddy, uneven patch of brambles that discourages walking all the way to the actual water’s edge. It’s difficult to get through, but to me, so worth it, just to be down there, in that energy.

Being in the fog is like being in a temple. This is one of the sacred places in the area where I grew up, that is still my family home. 

 

The Divine Mother watches, at the bottom of the frame; fog hangs low in the river valley

 
 

The colors in the waves. The coal bin. The sunlight.

 
 

Through the kitchen window

 
 

The fog lifts and spreads across the hillside. This view is what we would call in SWPA, “down around.” 🙂

 

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Sacred Sciences

I’m like
Do you see how beautiful that is?
Yeah that, over there, that old
electrical tower, so tall,
so graceful, so simple,
a thin black outline
against the pink-orange sky.
Look at those angles,
how they keep their shape,
their straight lines,
even as the whole thing
maybe leans
a little to the south,
those triangles and trapezoids
still distribute physical forces,
still hold up wires
that connect
power source to power use,
origin
to purpose.

I’m like
Wow
That’s some hard stuff
you’re going through,
sister, brother. That’s some
down-deep hard trial, that’s
really gonna take you
into the shadow,
gonna test you, gonna take
all the grit you can muster,
man, I see that discouraged
look on your face and I
understand. That is a pile,
that is a wagonload of the smelly stuff
they’re heaping on you, oh yes,
I see it, I don’t think you’re
making it up, you got
a real challenge right here,
it’s gonna take exactly
as much
as you have
but no more, trust me,
no more.

I’m not like
everything’s fine.
I’m not like
force yourself
to see how this is actually good.
I’m not like
it’s all what you make it.
I mean, it is.
But that’s someone else’s
line, not mine.
Not always.
Prevailing taste?
I’m here to show
whatever’s outside.

I’m like
This life is hard
when you go heart-to-the-wall,
no overcoat into
the hurricane of egos
crashing into each other
like thunderclouds,
throwing electricity in moments of passion
and flooding all the earth with tears.
When the hail hits
your soft unprotected parts
that bruise will hurt like hell.
But you’re tough – you
can take it. There’s this
secret chamber,
a heart inside your heart
where the raw storm energy
collects – only if the door is open.
And one day
when there’s something
you need to do
and there’s a wall or an army
or the Devil himself in your way,
you’ll go to this reservoir,
you’ll cast down your dipper,
and up will rise in you
like liquid starlight
the power that comes
from living life, only.
Your courage in facing
whatever tried to hold you down
becomes brilliance,
becomes boldness,
becomes beauty.

  
 

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An Opening, A Turn

Humiliating experiences.
Continual verbal harassment.
Sustained discrimination.
Social exclusion.
Intentional cruelty.
Chronic, ongoing fear and anxiety.
Perception of being trapped.
Feeling powerless to stop an attack.
Repetition of the above.

These are some of the causes of trauma.

Trauma, in the emotional or psychological sense, refers to “experiences or situations that are emotionally painful and distressing, and that overwhelm people’s ability to cope, leaving them powerless” (Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice). According to the nonprofit mental health resource HelpGuide.org,

Emotional and psychological trauma is the result of extraordinarily stressful events that shatter your sense of security, making you feel helpless and vulnerable in a dangerous world. Traumatic experiences often involve a threat to life or safety, but any situation that leaves you feeling overwhelmed and alone can be traumatic, even if it doesn’t involve physical harm. It’s not the objective facts that determine whether an event is traumatic, but your subjective emotional experience of the event. The more frightened and helpless you feel, the more likely you are to be traumatized.

The DSM, in its discussion of post traumatic stress syndrome, indicates that while this condition is typically thought of as resulting from one major event, an experience of violence or extreme horror, PTSD can also come about from an “accumulation of many small, individually non-life-threatening incidents.” Bullying is one scenario that is noted as a potential cause of what’s referred to as “complex PTSD” (Psychology Today).

What are some of the lasting effects of traumas of this nature – the subtle (or not subtle) forms of non-physical violence that, repeated over time, deeply wound the mind, the heart, the spirit?

Severe depression.
Sadness.
Hopelessness.
Guilt. Shame. Self blame.
Feelings of disconnection from other people.
Social withdrawal.
Shock. Denial. Disbelief.
Edginess. Agitation. Anger.
Avoidance of things, people, places, activities, etc., that remind one of the trauma.
Emotional numbness, coldness, frigidity.
Difficulty in forming close, lasting relationships.
Difficulty in accessing one’s capacity for sexual pleasure.
Abuse of drugs or alcohol.

I mean.

I read all this stuff, and it is my story. Every word of it is me.

I read it and I feel relief. This is what happened to me. I didn’t make it up.

And then I read it again and another voice inside of me says: Hush. This doesn’t mean anything. This happens to everyone. Who are you kidding? You’re not a trauma survivor. You’re an ordinary person living a relatively privileged life. Trauma is rape, war, having your house burn down. Bullying isn’t trauma. … Well, maybe for some people. But not in your case. You were just a kid in school and that’s what being a kid in school is like. Sucky. Now close that door, shut your mouth and walk away.

I have a Ph.D. in American Studies. My specialization is minority literatures. I used to teach about privilege and oppression in college classrooms. I shared classic works by brilliant artists with students who were adult, educated, intelligent, and in some cases, quite worldly. And it was always this: When a writer described experiences of oppression related to their membership in a group targeted for discrimination due to their race, ethnicity, nationality, economic status, gender, sexual orientation, age, ability, or anything at all, the students cried out, “They’re so angry. All they can talk about is how they’re a victim. The mean old world did this, that, and the other bad thing to me, my family, my great grandparents, my group. OK, well, bad things happen to everyone. Get over it. Nobody wants to hear that shit.” The contempt, the revulsion, was congealed in and dripping from their voices, their faces, their written responses. Nobody wants to fucking hear it. OK. Point made.

It can be awfully hard for someone who experiences privilege in a certain area of life to understand that some of the things that helped put them in the position they enjoy, occurred at the expense of other people, people they’ve never met, people who may live somewhere else in the world or who may be dead now. That it’s not simply a matter of the lucky-blessed-by-fate and the neutral. Privilege means you got yours BECAUSE something was taken away from someone else. Specifically. And in my experience, just about no one wants to have that kind of responsibility put on them. Especially folks who are privileged on one axis – but oppressed on another.

I’m a fat, lesbian recovering alcoholic whose family background is working class (and back before that, just plain poor). With plenty of serious mental health issues in all the branches of the family tree.

You think I want to say anything that’s going to make someone call me a whiner, a victim, a blamer-of-society-for-my-problems? Fuck no.

And on social media. And among my friends. I don’t want a reputation for focusing on the negative. I certainly don’t want to come across as feeling wronged, limited, or damaged by what I see others as having supposedly done to me. People don’t like people like that – at least people I know don’t.

But yet.

There are these experiences. That shaped who I am. And the way that they shaped me was in the form of trauma.

Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk, a pioneer in the field of trauma treatment, said, “I think trauma really does confront you with the best and the worst. You see the horrendous things that people do to each other, but you also see resiliency, the power of love, the power of caring, the power of commitment, the power of commitment to oneself, the knowledge that there are things that are larger than our individual survival” (On Being interview).

I don’t want to talk about my trauma as something bad that happened to me, some outside force that stunted my chances for a health and happiness. I want to talk about it as a gift my soul gave me, a core set of lessons in the curriculum of my life, something written into the plan for my earthly journey before I incarnated into this lifetime, one of the cards in the hand I dealt myself before birth – in consultation with the Divine, with my guardian angels, with the highest wisdom and guidance available to my spiritual self.

I want to talk about it as something that really happened.

I want to begin to integrate it. So that I can move on.

Dr. Van der Kolk says that trauma is different from other difficult experiences (even the very most difficult ones of all) in that trauma exceeds a person’s ability to process what’s happening, to cope with the emotions, to sustain a sense of safety and fundamental okayness. This effect is compounded when the social or family environment surrounding the traumatic incident(s) does not allow the person to feel what they feel, does not accept the reality that the person is trying to express, essentially, does not surround the person with love, comfort, compassion, care, and reassurance that they deserve to have healing.

In these situations, a person cannot then integrate the traumatic experience as just another story, even if a painful one, in their self-history. The person can’t create such a story because there is no acceptance for it, neither internally nor externally. The person cannot, then, deal with the consequences of what happened, whatever those consequences may be.

The unintegrated experience remains in the body. In the tissues. In the cells. It is a felt memory, one that a person doesn’t so much recall as relive. The words to describe the experience don’t actually exist – even if the experience itself could theoretically be told about in the most mundane of terms. “He called me this name. Over and over. Everyone else joined in. Nobody would talk to me. It lasted for ten years.”

A few years ago, everyone was talking about bullying all the time, especially in queer activist circles. A lot of attention was being given to kids, especially queer ones, who committed suicide after being bullied. The whole “It Gets Better” campaign was started by Dan Savage, and it became viral. People started to talk about bullying, to take it seriously.

I could not participate in those conversations.

I couldn’t talk about my experiences of having been bullied. I couldn’t talk about other people being bullied, because that might lead to my having to talk about me being bullied.

Being bullied. Being bullied. Being bullied. I am saying it a bunch of times right now because the phrase has such a charge for me, because it scares me so much. And for some reason all of a sudden today, I am ready to, I NEED to, face it.

I shut the door tight on that period of my life. I can talk about my struggles around self love, I can talk about almost killing myself with alcohol, I can talk about depression and economic exploitation and all this other stuff, I can go on and on, I have a lot of passion for sharing these experiences that I’ve had in the hopes that what I have learned through those challenges may be of some help to someone else somewhere. But I can’t talk about being bullied because I am still so ashamed.

When someone else comes out about their experiences being bullied, I think they are brave – and that their sharing their stories helps make the world a better place.

When I imagine myself talking about being bullied, I feel exposed. I am too embarrassed to even go there. I imagine it must seem so terribly predictable, so cliché, so obvious. I tell myself that of course I was responsible for how people treated me; I was too shy, too weird, too unskillful in my social interactions, yes, too unattractive. I deserved it. Deep down, well, maybe not so deep down, I believe that I deserved it, I brought it on myself. In retrospect I think I could have done any number of things differently and my life in school would have been different. If I had known better. If I had tried harder. If I had forced myself to not be so … strange. So fucked up. Such an ass. So goody-goody. So difficult to like.

I don’t get to talk about being bullied. Because I deserved to be bullied. That’s how I felt when the conversation came up. How I still feel. That’s why I couldn’t say anything – why I wanted to run away when people started talking about this. All this shame would well up from the pit of my stomach and I would have to swallow it down and it just made me feel like puking.

Then today. At work. I read a blog post by someone who was coming out of the closet and asking her readers what it was that they were afraid to share about themselves. And I read this post on my friend’s blog, talking about witnessing others being outcast at school. And then I was editing an essay by someone else about the culture of weight hate. And then I was re-reading this other article on our company website about trauma and weight gain. And all these texts were crossing my path talking about what the body does to try to meet our needs for emotional healing when our minds aren’t actually able to deal with our traumas.

And somehow it all came together and I just wondered what energy would be freed up if I was able to actually look this trauma right in the eye and say:

Yes.

I was severely bullied throughout elementary, middle and high school.

Whole classes called me names, loudly discussed my ugliness, threw things at me, excluded me from group projects so that I had to make up my own solo assignments in order to pass.

I hated my existence.

Going to school was a torment. Any time I achieved an honor – such as being selected for the senior show choir – my actual life got worse, as these groups were full of people who missed no opportunity to mock and degrade me.

As is so often the case, telling adults only made things worse, because they belittled my emotional responses and accused me of tattling.

I was a child. I did nothing to deserve the cruelty that surrounded me.

I was suicidally depressed.

Long after I graduated and went on to become a successful adult, I pictured myself jumping off of bridges.

I tried to eradicate myself by drinking.

Luckily, I failed at that.

And here I am. I grew up fine. I have a life that I love, a sweet job, a wonderful home in an awesome city with my beloved partner and my beloved roommate, creative passions, dreams, goals, purpose, service, positions of leadership, a spiritual path. Many friends. Abundant, nourishing community. I’m utterly surrounded by love and support today. There is just about zero bullying in my life, and what bullying does show up is not personal towards me, but simply the outflowing of someone else’s fear.

And I have this trunk in the basement of my psyche that is tightly locked. I stand on the lid so that it stays down, so that I most of the time never even notice that it is there.

But it moves.

It shakes. It vibrates. It is full, full, burstingly full of energy.

I think the energy has actually grown over time.

I think that if I don’t open it, if I don’t look at the contents and see what is in there, I think it might, one day, explode.

So this is me – stepping down off the trunk, pulling out the key that I’d forgotten was there on a chain around my neck all along, putting it in the lock and

turning

turning

turning

to face whatever comes out.

  

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Reset

I just came back from a vacation, the first real, honest-to-pete, traveling just for the pleasure of exploration and bonding with one another that my partner and I have had the opportunity to enjoy together in years, most of our trips being family visits or retreats that we’re working at or quickie one-night getaways around Colorado. All of these, mind you, are normally both fun and fulfilling, but five days on the beach, letting our eyes rest on the waves in varying shades of blue rolling gently up onto the shore, well … It’s a different animal.

The holiday season this year left me feeling emotionally stirred up, at times very frustrated, and in the end unsure of myself and how I am supposed to respond to the world around me, with some degree of accompanying anxiety or malaise or depression — whatever you want to call it — the intensity depending on the day. But as our departure on this trip was set for New Year’s Day, I held the intention that the days “off the network” would be a way to hit the “Reset” button on my life. Like any good vacation should, the time away inserted a pause into my usual routines, interrupted habits (hopefully productively), gave me some space to see where changes could be helpful. There were a few main areas that kept floating to the surface like buoys bobbing on the ocean, just far enough out that it takes a hard swim to touch them.

One of those areas was busy-ness.

When I look back on the times when I’ve felt frustrated with my life in 2015, felt like I was spinning my wheels, like I didn’t know where my life was going or what my purpose was or who I was helping with my existence, those were often the times when I had gotten to feeling cramped, overcommitted, hemmed in, stuck in a self-created cage.

I am blessed to have a full time job and an abundance of activities to fill my time. Only thing is, I sometimes find myself filling my time so full that there is no room for dreams to grow. I guess I am restless both geographically and spiritually, and when my life gets so crowded that I can’t find a pathway out of the hustle, I start to have breakdowns.

I’ve already gone through a process of letting go of things that I’ve outgrown or that aren’t making me happy. I’m down to the things I’ve held on to because I love them. But I understand that I need to make some difficult choices now and let go some more — let go of some of the things that actually do feed me — because when a garden becomes choked, even with nourishing plants, it becomes harder and harder for anything to grow.

And there are things I want to grow. Solitude. Quiet meditation. Writing.

So on the updraft of Reset, I will be practicing this letting go, looking for a new balance that includes more space for my dreams to grow in.

As I have the goal of bringing writing from the sidelines to the forefront of my life, I’ve been thinking not only about what needs to be rearranged for it to fit, but also —

What do I have to say? What is the purpose of my talking at all? Questions that require silence to explore. And there were other questions that arose as well, in these beginnings of mental space, questions about my outlook, my role as a writer, as an observer and commentator, as a scholar outside the academy, as a witness to and participant in culture. (Some of these I will talk about in more detail in the next post — I started to go into it here, but the tangent got too long and split into its own separate essay, oops!)

I’ll be delving into these questions in the weeks to come. And if I find anything out,

I’ll let you know.

Funny how traveling brings the gaze right back to the self. Wherever we go, there we are, right? So what’s in this bag that I can’t help bringing everywhere with me?

Baby New Year
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Baby New Year

  

Last year at work, my friend and I were trying to pick an image to go with our company’s New Year message. We both liked this stock photo but weren’t sure if it fit. 

“It totally does,” I said. “Look. It’s the baby New Year being born from the lotus.”

“Ooooh,” she said, or something like that. The concept charmed us both — the sparkles of unformed possibility bursting, no, floating, no, rising lightly and cheerfully from the flower that had finally bloomed out of the mud and the tears of the past year. 

Well, alas, our idea was vetoed by our bosses in favor of a more traditional narrative, but I held on to it in my mind. I love creating alternative mythologies, and once the story has been spoken aloud, it is in my opinion as valid as any legend. After all, every fairy tale was first made up by SOMEone before going the medieval equivalent of viral. So yes, I sometimes write my own myths and then live by their morals. I claim this as my creative prerogative. 

We did use the stock image for other posts throughout the year, and every time I saw it I remembered the baby New Year. And I decided that come 2016 I would use it on my own blog. And so I made an account and bought the credits and and downloaded my very first stock photo, and now I own it. 

Which brings me to my theme for 2016: Owning it. 

What does that mean?

2015’s theme, that is, the spiritual power I intended to claim by calling up and facing anything and everything in my inner world that stood between me and that power, was Self Love. Anyone who knows me knows I have been plagued (have plagued myself) with an ultra critical, downright mean and nasty inner voice of self judgment for as long as I can remember, certainly since wee childhood. This voice kept me living in a thick, heavy shell, kept me always tearing myself down, pushing myself to exhaustion, never able to fully receive love since I didn’t believe I was worthy, never able to really share my light because I believed I was so insignificant, so annoying, so bad at things, such an eyesore. 

I began last year finally wishing to change that, ready to let go of a way of thinking that I had come to understand was warped, dark, self defeating, unhelpful. I made the commitment to free myself from that sticky mental web in which my angry judging self held my heart captive and sucked its energy like a spider drains the life force from a bug. 

The challenges came. It was a tough year for my heart. But every time life asked me to do something that I thought I could never find the strength to do, if my deeper guidance whispered that it was the path of self love, I tried my best to do it. I took many steps into the scary unknown, following that faint and mystical light. Sometimes my only criterion for success was that I do it differently than I had done it in the past. And in this way I set about breaking habits. 

And as the year went on I noticed these habits, like broken chains, falling away. I began to feel lighter. More confident. Gradually, the balance shifted and the mean voice got quieter and the voice of my heart, my dreams, my inner knowing, got louder, until it was the first voice I heard instead of the last. I began to recognize my heart’s desires as a source of guidance, longings placed there by Spirit to help me find my direction in life. 

I’ve come to accept that this voice, this guidance, is true for me. But it’s still a little scary for me to make it the practical compass of my life, to really live by it, especially when it seems to sometimes take me in the opposite direction from the current of the “main stream,” or to go against what I perceive to be the preferences of the people around m

So that’s where I am today.  Working on owning it. Experimenting with living life according to my own quirky standards, with taking my marching orders from Spirit as I try to become a little better every day at decoding the instructions that bubble up from the depths of my soul. Just that. Living from my core, my essence. Not claiming to always fully understand the messages, knowing that at any moment I could be totally missing the mark, but trying, trying to hear, trying to hear better all the time. 

Having released a large portion of my inner self judgment, it’s time for me now to release my attachment to others’ approval. It’s time to face the degree to which I limit my choices out of the fear of not being liked. 

Call me crazy, but this feels like the easier of the two. 

When I understand that I have inherent value, I have less drive to find my sense of self worth in others’ opinions. Instead of a survival need, it becomes simply a habit. It feels comfortable, but it’s a false comfort — it’s actually just an attempt at distracting myself from the underlying anxiety, the gnawing fear that I am not and never will be connected to other humans in a meaningful way. 

Luckily, I have quit enough habits, enough methods of self distraction, to know that it’s totally doable. And I also know with both my brain and my heart that what I fear is not true; I am beautifully and indissolubly connected with all of life, and with all human beings. And I also know that — to paraphrase Marianne Williamson’s famous quote — it can be far more terrifying to embrace our connectedness, our interdependence, our strength, our beauty, our truth, our dreams, our magic, and to accept the responsibility that comes with our power, than it is to imagine ourselves small, helpless, and alone. 

So my intention, my challenge, this year is to own it. To own all of the above. To believe in my worth, my lovability, my vision, and to act like I believe it in front of the world. 

And here’s a really odd thing. Since crystallizing this intention a week or so ago, I have noticed a subtle but perhaps significant change in myself. I am normally very, very, um, VERY introverted when it comes to actually talking to people. (As a Leo I don’t have a problem being on stage performing, but as a Cancer cusp + moon I pretty much hate and fear social interaction, except with people I already know and feel safe around, and even then, it can be iffy.) Lately, though, I’ve been — striking up conversations. With strangers. And the exchanges have been — really nice. 

It’s like maybe, as I begin to let go of the fear of not being accepted, as I realize that I don’t truly NEED others’ approval when I have my own, I am less afraid of these other unknown humans walking around on earth with me, jostling egos with each other and with me, like we all always do. As I am less afraid, I am more curious. As I am more curious, I am more open. As I am more open, I am less defensive, and I allow more love into my heart. 

How funny. By caring less about whether others love me, I actually begin to experience more love. 

This understanding, like this new year, is still just a baby. I know I have many layers to work through before I really get this power of “owning it,” before I really feel it as part of me. But those sparkles of possibility rising from the lotus are so hopeful.  

I think it’s going to be a really good year.  

  

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On the Artistic Freedom of Impermanence


This way of looking at art and life has been so much in the forefront for me lately. Each moment dies into the next. Each moment of beauty is completely unique and irrevocably fleeting. More and more I am trying to savor the impressions of beauty, love, connectedness as each moment’s inherent perfection dissolves into the different perfection of the next moment.

I am learning about the sweetness of appreciating and releasing the exquisite combination of notes, the heartbreakingly vibrant vision, the brief consonance of hearts as they cross paths on their separate journeys, the delicacy of any created thing in the face of time.

For beautiful, and for inspirational, I recommend the video below. In this “talk” which is mostly music, but also some very insightful words about music and the moment, violinist, songwriter and improvisation artist Kishi Bashi says that this philosophy helps him feel freer to take artistic risks, knowing every creation and every experience is temporary. Since everything is always passing, and we’re not tied to any one expression forever, one might as well follow one’s heart.

Yes? Why not, say I.

Thank You, Krishna Das
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Thank You, Krishna Das

Where would I be if I had never heard of Krishna Das?

Probably somewhere being sad and pitiful. 

Well, ok. I’m still completely capable of being sad and pitiful even having heard of Krishna Das. But I think I am at least a little less so for having heard his music and for having sung along, for having read his writing and for having seen so many of my own struggles reflected there — for having been in his presence and chanted the Divine Names and felt the vibration of his voice and the vibration of my voice and the vibration of all those other people’s voices meeting like old friends in outer space, dancing together and becoming one joined vibration of devotion. 

Like at today’s workshop at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities. 

“I’m a born moper,” he said. He described himself as a baby, crawling around mopily. 

In his memoir Chants of a Lifetime, he talks about his long and intimate relationships with depression, drug addiction, feelings of worthlessness, guilt, shame, regret. Even today he talked about depression as something that still comes around, still sometimes brings everyday life to a halt. 

And he talked about how singing the names of God helps. 

Because, he says, these names have power. They’re more than affirmations or reminders for our brains. They are “revealed” names, seen or heard or perceived by advanced beings and passed on to other humans for the purpose of awakening our souls’ memory, our awareness of the divinity that lives within us. They are like soft and subtle cloths that, with infinite gentleness, wipe away the deep layers of dust from our mirror hearts so that we can again reflect the light of God into the world and into our lives. 

And if he’s an example of this, one can reflect a lot of damn light without having to be perfect, or vanquish the inner struggles forever, or even give up swear words (thanks for that!!!).

It’s funny — just this morning after church someone asked me where I get the songs I lead. “They’re not hymnal songs,” she said. I told her, some of them are! But mostly they are chants, and I collect chants. I go to different circles and retreats and places of worship (and sometimes bookstores and YouTube channels) and learn all the chants I can. 

“What got you into that?” she asked. I said that I’d always been a singer, but at some point about ten or twelve years ago I suddenly felt an urge to take a break from choirs and go seek out ways to practice non-performance sacred singing. And I’ve been doing that ever since. Then I started sharing the chants I’d learned. Providing opportunities for people to connect with the sacred and to feel what’s in their hearts and to explore and express their utterly unique voices through chant and other forms of sacred singing has become one of the biggest passions of my life. 

But why?

Krishna Das says — “Why are we doing this? Because we want our level of suffering to come down.”

Ok, I’ll take that. 

We want to heal our small and big hurts, from the daily beatings our sensitive egos endure to the deep wound of our belief in separateness. For all of these painful places, chant can be a balm. And as we become (to use another of my favorite KD phrases) “gradually but inevitably” more peaceful, we also become more gentle with others, more compassionate, more available to help those of our fellow humans who are suffering — and who may be lashing out around themselves as a result of their own pain. 

Chanting is just one of many devotional acts that have a potential ripple effect that can contribute to the healing and evolution of this organism called humanity. But it’s the one that called me, and I’ve been following that call to the best of my ability. 

In Sufism they say that teachings are wonderful and helpful, but the juiciest stuff, the stuff that really gets you to grow and change, is transmitted on the energetic plane by being in the teacher’s presence. (And time and space being, well, not quite the fixities we think they are, a profound transmission can happen in a brief encounter, or across vast distances, or even after the teacher has left the body. The personalities involved do not even have to know each other. Our beings are operating on many more levels than we’re aware of.) I am so grateful for what I have learned from Krishna Das from his writings and recordings — and I also like to put myself, from time to time, when possible, in my teachers’ physical presence. Just to see what happens. 

What happened this time when I chanted kirtan with Krishna Das in Arvada, CO?

I went swimming. 

The experience of chanting today was kind of like having my heart taken out of my body, dipped in kerosene, and lit on fire — then dropped into a sea so cool and so dense with salt that it didn’t sink and didn’t burn but floated and blazed there in the middle of the ocean —

Then every now and then my heart would look back at my body and see it doing silly things, rocking back and forth, raising hands in the air, and sometimes clutching at that space in my chest where the heart goes, as though yearning to physically grasp and take hold of that oceanic feeling and plant it there forever …

As I said, Silly. 

But so human. 

That feeling doesn’t stay forever — at least not on my side of enlightenment (ie, the side that isn’t enlightened). But next time I am depressed or feeling worthless or lying in bed furious and unable to sleep, wishing I could wake someone up and punch them (true story), maybe I’ll remember just a hair sooner that there ARE ways to restore equilibrium, to come back to grace. 

Thanks for this, KD, and for everything. You’re awesome. 

(I love this song so much.)