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The physical shift that helped me to “see.”

 

Free Teleconference with Cynthia

Thursday March 8th 5pm Pacific Time (full moon)

 

I remember the day I learned to simultaneously apply focus and easy focus. It changed my life. I felt different in my head. I flooded with grace. It was so easy. Why couldn’t I do this before? It was like riding a bike. My alignment changed.

Unfortunately, it threw my back out.  I eased up and returned (with mercy) to my hyper focused ways.

But I didn’t give up. I snuck up on the simultaneous access of my incisive focus while opening to the wider field (easy focus).

If you are you intrigued by answers that come out of the blue you may access easy focus. If you need things to make sense you may be looking hard at the world and over focus.

It’s hard for the Universal to reach us when we shine our bright light on it and blind ourselves.  A definition of shaman is “one who sees in the dark.”

On March 8th I am offering a free teleconference on one skill for seeing in the dark. I’ll lead a guided meditation with silence, movement and sound. Then earn how to play with focus and notice what happens.

1.  Mar 8, 2012 at 5:00 PM PST click on https://www3.gotomeeting.com/join/718289254

2.  Use your microphone and speakers (VoIP) – a headset is recommended. Or, call in using your telephone.

Dial +1 (213) 493-0600
Access Code: 718-289-254
Audio PIN: Shown after joining the meeting

Meeting ID: 718-289-254

Email me at cynthia@interplay.org if you would like me to email you a reminder.

The Mystic Tech Journey

This month I am sending ideas and practices to all levels of Mystic Tech subscribers including

  • A pdf on Artist as Community Mystic.
  • An excerpt from Chasing the Dance of Life.
  • Bi-weekly emails to provoke the Mystic Journey.
  • A Body Prayer Youtube and pdf. on Underlying Affirmations for a Body Prayer Practice.
  • A chant for the journey.

For personal connection small online Art and Wisdom groups offer real, visual interaction and places to share creativity inspired by mystical connection. Affirming mystic wisdom strengthens the role of mystics in the world at a time when spiritual solutions may be what we need more than anything.
Body and Soul members receive all this plus individual sessions at an incredible discount.

Join me. There is so much to share and learn about this under developed area.

If you are visiting the blog for the first time consider getting regular updates and gifts in your inbox by entering your email into the Blog subscribers at the top right. I’d be delighted to send you a free audio gift “Define Mystic.”

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Dancing with Death

Thank  you for your condolences. You are a spiral of beings, a DNA-Dancing Network of Artfulness. If I visualize my relationships as a vertical spiral, looking from above, we appear close together rather than scattered far and wide. This comforts my heart.

We are not alone. Isn’t it curious that Together is “To Get Her.”  One friend said to me, “Now we are each other’s mothers.”

How do you relate to a mother who has departed? Please comment. Thank you as well for your provocative comments about ways to grieve.

Mom died two weeks ago.  I am watery. I’ve had two small home memorials and continue to find ways to make grief holy. Ritual grounds me.

Today I bought a skull on a staff. It was an impulse buy. I was on my way to get a black armband embroidered with Lurley Katherine Wentworth at Eclipse Alterations (perfect name). I walked by a shop and a woman was holding it. I couldn’t resist.

I fantasized about taking the skull staff to Minnesota this weekend for High Play: InterPlay and Ritual to lean on. Will I be able to lead, guide and dance in a state of grieving? I’ll report next week. Fortunately, I will be surrounded by friends in the spiral dance.

Meanwhile, I need to postpone the launch of Mystic Tech community sharing until March. I lost my hard drive. Can you believe it?  Death slows things down. I’m on divine time and mystery has me by the heart.

Are you interested in a community of mystics engaged in deep imagination body wisdom and creativity? Click here to see more.

See the side bar to the right. Scroll through the Mystic Tech members to see the levels of participation. March 1st will be the new subscription date. You can pay by paypal or send me a check.

If you have already indicated interest I’ll email you. If you don’t hear from me let me know and share any feedback about interests or desires as I move forward. Your wisdom is invaluable.

In the dance of life, death, and great love,

Bring Back the Black Armband!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Ragamuffins.JPG
Orphans with black armbands to mourn their mother F.M. Brown 1865

 

I wish I had a black arm band, a sign to say I am in mourning.
I went online but can’t find any at Amazon.
Except police. They can get cheap bands online and so can teams who lose a member.
I discovered that “Black Arm Band” is a group of Australia’s premier indigenous musicians.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e88mz-b4kaY

When I visited the Aboriginal embassy outside the parliament of Australia’s capital, Canberra, a 40-year-old occupy” movement, I saw people who know grief.

My friend Martin, a doctor, once attended an Aboriginal “Sorry Camp.”  He joined a patient’s family in the desert outside of town the night of her death. Under the dark sky people wept and wept, held in each other’s laps saying, “Sorry. Sorry.” There was food and bodies that rhythmically bumped shoulder to shoulder. This was what their grieving body wanted.

My body needs to recognize the profound loss of a loved one. Mostly, I am doing this alone, yet glad that I don’t live in 18th century England.

“By the 19th century, mourning behaviour in England had developed into a complex set of rules, particularly among the upper classes. Women bore the greatest burden of these customs. They involved wearing heavy, concealing, black clothing, and the use of heavy veils of black crêpe…”widow’s weeds” (from the Old English “Waed” meaning “garment”).

… There was special mourning jewelry, often made of jet and with the hair of the deceased in a locket or brooch…Widows were expected to wear special clothes to indicate that they were in mourning for up to four years after the death, although a widow could choose to wear such attire for the rest of her life. …  In general, servants wore black armbands when there had been a death in the household.

One blogger says “The fashion for heavy mourning was drastically reduced after the Great War.  So many individuals died that just about everyone was in mourning for someone. By 1918 a whole new attitude had developed and this was hastened even further by the Second World War.”

The world had so much mourning that people couldn’t handle that much black? My husband, a hospice chaplain, said, “Maybe if all the women had worn black there wouldn’t have been a second world war.”

Death, the great teacher, is invisible on our streets, in our cafe’s and schools. So, I am considering a black arm band thanks to my good friend and muse Sharon Pavelda, a death midwife and persona known as Mortina DeKay, the merry mortician who asks, “What if the reaper isn’t grim?” She agrees that we need a sign that death has us by the sleeve.

If I find a black arm band I might just wear it until it falls off. How do you move in the world when death leads?

Salvation: How shall I know what to do?

Panjab Hills, Bilaspur. Opaque watercolor and ...
Image via Wikipedia

Sleeping on an air bed in Santa Cruz, I awoke from a dream. I saw a piece of paper and on it was my “soul contract.” It said something like “Share Somatic Wisdom.”Soul Contract is not language I use, but  I remembered that Carolyn Myss wrote a book called Soul Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential. The dream reassured me that I am on the right path.

A current challenge is that I’ve learned to manifest, draw some people and produce events. Yet, if I do too much I

  • overwork and loose grace.
  • discount my family.
  • hog leadership and hinder Collective Growth
  • make poor decisions (article on Decision Fatigue– John Tierney)
  • rely on will instead of higher power (Synchronous, Magical Love).

As a Mystic my relationship with GREAT LOVE guides my life. Lately, operating by will with financial insecurity and “pictures in my head” about what to do literally stopped working.

I had to admit this and grieve.

Today I read the secret at the end of the Bhagavad Gita, a holy work with which I have almost no familiarity. HOORAY!   Krishna says to Arjuna

Hear further My supreme word, most secret of all. Thou art dearly loved by me; therefore shall I disclose (this secret) for thy Good.

Fix they mind upon Me, Devote thyself to Me.
Make every action a sacrifice (a holy act) to Me,
hold thyself as nothing before Me.
You shall come to Me truly,
I promise, for you are dear to Me.

Abandon all dharmas,
Take refuge in Me alone.
I shall liberate you from all sins,
Do not grieve.                                     Gita 18.64, 65, 66

Do not grieve!?!

September of 2010 I entered a “GREAT PRUNING.” In a dream I saw the Tree of Life growing out of the world and felt shock to see ALL of its branches cut off, leaving only the trunk!

The dream was prophetic. Life started lopping at my attachments: airplane engine failure over the Pacific, my mother’s personality taken by Alzheimer’s, Dad’s heart surgeries, dead hard drive (knowledge and information), salary reduction (financial security) and odd things like the breaking the zipper on my luggage.

Out of that season grew this blog, Mystic Tech as I also realized that I must prepare to let go of InterPlay roles. Guidance turned me back toward spiritual leadership. My calendar emptied. Circumstances slowed me down.

There are new lessons. I began to make amends to myself for OVER giving. For months my third chakra has complained with an ache. Real rest requires deep change, beyond trying to find balance. Thomas Merton said,

Some of us need to discover that we will not begin to live more fully until we have the courage to do and see and taste and experience much less than usual…And for a man who has let himself be drawn completely out of himself by his activity, nothing is more difficult than to sit still and rest, doing nothing at all. The very act of resting is the hardest and most courageous act he can perform.

How will I know what to do if I don’t MAKE IT HAPPEN? What is the difference between my will and my heart? You’d think an improvisational expert would know the answer to this, yet I am humbled by fear and anxiety. InterPlay creates space for the heart, but it is up to me to engage it.

As a woman I am glad for a strong will, taking responsibility for the power to create, and dancing the path of mutuality, collaboration and self-awareness.

I am grateful that I do sense that I am loved, both by myself and something greater. If I listen to the Beloved, will I know what to do next?

Things I can practice.

  • I will not fill my calendar. I will wait. I will rest.
  • I will open to and love the Beloved.
  • I will engage my heart to understand what I am to do.

I could be a beloved bit of nothing. I could take little moments and make a holy offering from a place of rest. I could wait and listen with my heart. I could be the one I am waiting for…

Ahhhh–that feels better.

Related articles

No longer refusing shame

fluir en vol ( tornare ) - To flow in flight ...
Image by all-i-oli ( Jordi@photos ) via Flickr

I recently wrote about having dysthymia, a mild form of depression and InterPlay as medicinal in that regard. I’ve felt unexplainably crappy and needed to evaluate where I needed support. Two specific  ideas popped up

  • Move Your Muscles
  • Paint

I hate to exercise but enjoy moving. On the weekend I moved living room furniture and cleaned my deck. Monday I danced with Wint It! That helped!

Then, I dropped in at Chris Zydell’s Wild Heart Painting studio, where I’d gone last winter in the midst of a big pruning of attachments to mom, safety, and income. Four sessions of “process painting” offered insights, emotional connections, and a ritualized container to update my view of who I am. As a visual thinker this was powerful.

In the studio this week after a brief check in with Chris and the other painters, I selected a palette of black and gold and green and began painting images of my guiding metaphors. As I painted a black hole arose in the corner, a dark moody fish diving among life’s darker truths. I honestly feel fond of this ability.

At bedtime I reached for The Biology of Transcendence by Joseph Chilton Pearce, a master teacher and proponent of play, nurture, transcendence, and evolution, stuff I root for. I forgot how much I underlined in his book.

In the AM I picked it up again and read that fear and anxiety necessarily prune our brain back toward basic survival thinking when the times are too difficult to allow us to evolve. On the other hand did I, by painting, allow my brain  to evolve rather than stay back in the survival mode.

I fear the shame of failing at my dreams and yet I dream big, ridiculously counter cultural dreams, like “lets get dance and the protestant work ethic together” and lets put the body back in wisdom.

I deny shame. I must have an inner Atilla the Hun against anything that impedes my relationship with the divine, creativity or nurture. It’s outright refusal. But this refusal has become a problem. I expend psychic energy that I need to create. What if I could loosen my grip on refusing shame?

I tried it out. My legs, achey from climbing steep hills of effort, felt a tingling flow of energy. Wow. Have I been fighting shame for eons?

Fear of Shame

i have refused
your cold wand, hot pyre, wax heart
your giant loppers and wet blankets smothering dreams
i have refused
your roadside spit, office glare, juried sentencing heart turned sideways, arms crossed.
But today shame is no bastard,
she’s a birthchild along with fatigue, frustration, hate,
mine to care for and hold lightly.
I relax and feel free.