Some voices are in the room. Some voices come on a page. Some are channeled. Some are felt. There is guidance. There is guidance coming from everywhere. Ask your specific question. Then listen as if someone were really there. Trust.
(thanks Janie Oakes for sending this poem)
A Morning Offering
I bless the night that nourished my heart To set the ghosts of longing free Into the flow and figure of dream That went to harvest from the dark Bread for the hunger no one sees.
All that is eternal in me Welcome the wonder of this day The field of brightness it creates Offering time for each thing To arise and illuminate
I place on the altar of dawn: The quiet loyalty of breath The tent of thought where I shelter, Wave of desire I am shore to And all the beauty drawn to the eye.
May my mind come alive today To the invisible geography That invites us to new frontiers To break the dead shell of yesterdays To risk being disturbed and changed.
May I have the courage today To live the life that I would love, To postpone my dream no longer But do at last what I came here for And waste my heart on fear no more.
Many mystics face dark nights. Howard Thurman, Mother Teresa, Henri Nouwen, Jesus? Saint John of the Cross wrote, “In the lucky dark no light to guide, except for my heart this fire inside.” Darkness is The Great Teacher. Yet powerlessness, loneliness, loss, and great rivers of rage, grief, and despair run deep. We suffer.
Can we embrace the dark Or do we need to let it take us like a lover? How can we learn to suffer and live? The wisdom of the body has clues. Sing, dance, tell, breathe, touch, dream, be still, notice.
Embrace the art of healing to play and pray with life’s challenges. See The Hymn of Jesus.
Unfortunately they also drive us nuts, into walls, over the edge, and into war. What is our deepest value?
In deep wonder about this question I’ve launched The Sacred Stories Project. I want to discover for myself the influence and importance of Great Love in our lives. I’ve begun to gather people to listen to body and soul, tell, and sometimes share moments that inspire them to love.
What is love? How does it affect our behavior? What happened to increase or challenge our ability to love?
For me, the feeling of love is my response to something transcendent, sacred, a phenomenon that is not necessarily passionate or emotional. It communicates underlying unconditional regard for all things. Everyday this regard is shown to me in nature, beauty, the kindness of people and demonstrations of our collective desire to keep learning how to love.
What inspires love in you. Why is it important? Do you have a story to tell?
If you knew the secrets of life you too would choose no other companion but love. -RUMI
The secrets are somewhere between the turban and the twirl, inside the socks turned inside out, under the river and up the tree, head in the cloud, saint in the sky. Stop looking. Empty being.
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
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…
I hang out with mystics. These are people who groove with mystery, dance with shadow and light, and go deep into their own universe. Cassandra Sagan is one of these. She lives in Portland, does InterPlay and is a Maggid, a Jewish storyteller. She wrote today….
Friends— As many of you know, my beloved grandson, Sidney Lev, was stillborn last year on Tisha B’av, rendering this day powerfully and eternally significant for me and my family, and I will be telling a very personal story about that loss at our minyan in Portland tonight. This morning I woke up with this image in my mind: Tisha B’av is like the intentional bee sting to an arthritic joint, a healing dose of intentional sadness.
Rob Brezhny who wrote PRONOIA, An Antidote to Paranoia, a book about (the very Jewish topic of) how the universe is conspiring to shower you with blessings, recommends that in addition to HAPPY HOURS we take time occasionally for SAD HOURS. Days of Mourning and intentional sadness are built into the cycle of the Jewish year, and I think that in addition to simply NOT FORGETTING the tragedies of our collective and individual past, they are also an opportunity to heal some of the associated trauma. As we all know, the story lines of sadness, loss, and tragedy are connected to each other through energetic and neural pathways; each new loss or sadness or betrayal seems to “light up” the whole sad string of lights, reactivating unhealed trauma. And each year, each time we come to Tisha B’av, we are in a new place in our own spiritual development, and by hanging out with, or at least playing tag with, touching on, having a safe container for a glimpse of our deepest grief and loss, we have the opportunity to bring new insight, light, strength, and story to what we hold in our bodies from the past—restorying, restorative.
I know most of you are understandably not fasting this Tisha B’av, or perhaps even NOTICING that it is Tisha B’av, but I do want to gently recommend that you take even a few minutes of silence on this day, when the gates of healing are opened to the collective Jewish bodywisdom, to reflect on, or write about, or davven on or dance on behalf of a little SAFESOMETHINGSAD, just a tiny sadness or loss or memory. TAKE THE BEE that’s here today for the taking. The Mystics say that Mashiach will be born on Tisha B’av; may she be born in you today, just a little!
B’shalom, Cassandra ZHRH
Thankful for all who play in the big spirit of life!
