WHERE IS GOD? by Mark Nepo

 

 

 

 

 

Where is God?
                           Mark Nepo
 
It’s as if what is unbreakable—
the very pulse of life—waits for
everything else to be torn away,
and then in the bareness that
only silence and suffering and
great love can expose, it dares
to speak through us and to us.
 
It seems to say, if you want to last,
hold on to nothing. If you want
to know love, let in everything.
If you want to feel the presence
of everything, stop counting the
things that break along the way.

News from the Mayan Calendar: 9 – 9 – 9

The number nine has been endowed with a special significance in many different spiritual and religious traditions. Nine was the number of muses in Greek mythology and Nine were the number of worlds in the Scandinavian. Nine was the number of doors to the holiest part of the temple in Jerusalem and the month of Ramadan is the Ninth in the Muslim calendar. Moreover, the counting system used by most of the world today includes nine numbers and so the relevance of this number is much ingrained in us. Also, in the Mayan tradition the number Nine plays a predominating role. The only existing inscription from ancient times that discusses the meaning of the Mayan calendar “end date” for instance speaks of Nine “deities” that will descend then as its crucial event. This would in modern wording mean that Nine energies, or Nine cosmic forces would fully manifest then since the ancient Maya would look upon time periods as “deities”. As far as we can tell these “deities”, or cosmic forces, are like evolutionary wave movements, built on top of one another where we are currently riding on the eighth one getting ready to ride on the ninth.   The Nine Cosmic levels (Underworlds) that according to the only existing Mayan inscription about the calendar end date (Tortuguero monument 6) will manifest then. Currently we are in the eighth level (The Galactic Underworld) gearing up to the Ninth and highest level, the Universal Underworld. Photo of the Pyramid of the Jaguar in Tikal by the author.) In the manifestation of these evolutionary waves we may now as we approach the Ninth level notice an amazing synchronicity. This is that the upcoming date 9.9.9 (September 9, 2009 in the Gregorian calendar) happens to coincide with the beginning of a Mayan Sacred Calendar count of 260 days. Hence, in this calendar, in use since 3000 years, the modern date 9.9.9 has the energy of Hun Imix, or 1 Alligator as its English translation reads, which happens to be the first of its energetic combinations. If we ponder what this synchronicity may be telling us the most natural conclusion to draw is that on this particular date we are called to focus on the number nine and especially the Ninth level of the Mayan calendar system, whose coming into existence we are soon about to witness. I believe that behind these cosmic forces, whose times of activation are described by the Mayan calendar, is an intelligent plan for the history of humanity that comes from a higher source and has a benevolent intention. To realize this is also to understand the importance of the guidance regarding how to follow this plan that we may gain from the calendar of the Maya. These nine cosmic forces are influencing and in fact governing our collective consciousness and so we have every reason to pay attention to what is going on in this cosmic time plan. Synchronicities can often be interpreted in different ways, but if they are profound they always deserve our attention. 9.9.9, three Nines in a row, may for instance be seen as symbolic of three sacred calendar rounds of 260 days that will now in three steps lead us to the completion of the Ninth level of evolution which is its highest level. To the best of our knowledge this highest energy state of the universe will be attained on the energy 13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13 13 Ahau (13 and Ahau are symbols of completion in the Mayan calendar) on the Gregorian date October 28, 2011. This highest state does not in any sense mean the end of the world, but only that all the Nine wave movements are then completed. Maybe we can use the metaphor that we are now about to climb the last hard steps of a ladder until we climb on to the roof where we will find a new stability under our feet and a place to rest. Regardless of what this final climb will mean we thus have reasons to expect an unprecedented period of change in a very short period of time. This is partly because we are entering the final phase of the eighth level of evolution and partly because a wave movement of a very high frequency, the Ninth level, will radically come to transform the collective consciousness in such a way that we will see the world in an entirely different light. It is for this reason that in the three upcoming Sacred Calendar rounds that follow upon 9.9.9 we will need to network and focus our intentions so that they converge in the birth of a new world. This is all the more important as there are several sources that seem to indicate that the sixth night of the Galactic Underworld, beginning on November 8, 2009, may come to generate a deep downturn in the world’s economy. The first of these 260-day Sacred Calendar rounds, the one which actually begins on 9.9.9 and goes on until May 26, 2010, may be seen as a period of build-up to the Ninth level that is suitable for prayer, meditation and mental focusing. We encourage community building, networking and spiritual synchronization in this time period, also of a practical nature. The second 260 calendar round, starting 27.05.10 will create a preliminary arrival of the Ninth level and the beginning of this will be marked by the Cosmic Convergence, July 17-18, a significant focus point for spiritual projects of a practical nature that will prepare for the birth of a new world. The third Sacred Calendar round of 260 days will begin February 11, 2011 and includes the actual activation of the Ninth level, the Universal Underworld on March 8, 2011. This may be the most dramatic of the three steps as it leads up to the establishment of the highest energy state of the universe on October 28, 2011. I believe that through these three steps, three Sacred Calendar rounds, starting on 9.9.9: 1/ Build-up, 2/ Preparatory Ninth level and 3/ Actual Ninth level of the evolution of the cosmos, the universe is now about to deliver what it has been striving towards all along, the establishment of a new level of consciousness, a unity consciousness. I also believe that the Ninth level is designed especially to generate such a unity consciousness, which will transform all of human society. For the human race it will mean very big challenges and opportunities. These changes will however not happen by themselves and need to be manifested by the human beings themselves who may then chose to resist or welcome them. From this perspective we may thus look at the date 9.9.9 not only as a numerological curiosity to celebrate, but also as an opportunity for us to focus on and embrace the participation of humanity in a transformation process of a very large scale, the one brought by the Ninth level of the Cosmos. From what we may understand of the Mayan calendar the unity consciousness will set an end to all forms of dominance of one human over another and especially those generated by the left brain. What this likely will mean is that instruments of dominance, such as the current financial system, weapons, national borders and many other structures upholding authority in this process will come to crumble as an effect of this unity consciousness coming into existence and so conclude with the birth of a new world where a divine harmony characterize the human relations. This end to dominance will also affect the relationship between the genders on a global scale that as a result will profoundly shift. Needless to say, there will never be any return to business as usual. Instead we will need to approach the birth of the new world consciously and with an intention of co-creating it in a positive sense and not just react to the various difficulties that lie ahead. I believe that such a collective intention of co-creating the new world will be the best way of easing the consequences of these difficulties. Although what is starting on 9.9.9 is only the build-up phase to the Ninth level, this date is nonetheless a very important focusing point since the timing of the continued preparations for the emergence of this level are of the essence. From this follows that the more practical projects that will start to manifest in the Cosmic Convergence, July 17-18 2010 as the name implies, will have to be based on an understanding that the very framework of the human existence and of consciousness will be dramatically expanded. The expansion of human consciousness is what will bring the socio-economic transformation at a time when the hardships of the old systems may be expected to be painfully felt also by nations that currently may been considered as wealthy. As the Ninth level is finally activated our identities will come to be defined in a much expanded spiritual framework. This article comes much too late to encourage people more broadly to focus and intend together for the future. Nonetheless, many will celebrate the 9.9.9 date regardless (see for example http://www.fredpajorden.se/sida21.html ). The purpose of my present article is then only to inform those that will be celebrating this date anyway, that indeed this is not just a numerological curiosity in the Gregorian calendar, but that the date plays a profound objective role in the cosmic plan as we may understand this from the Mayan calendar directly leading up to the birth of a new world through the Ninth level, 9.9.9. It is an ideal time to participate in prayers and meditations with the focus and intention of co-creating a new and better world. Additional tools for networking and communication with the focus on the Cosmic Convergence, July 17-18, 2012 will be developed as we go along. 9.9.9 may be seen as an initial and modest initial call for the co-creation of the birth of a new world. Malmö, September 6, 2009 (11 Edznab) Carl Johan Calleman

The Deeply Personal by Marc Nepo

Everything personal if faced
belongs to everyone, the way water
riding up the chest of a horse returns
to the river once the horse has crossed.
 
The deeply personal aspect of search,
which seems at times unbearable, leads
us to the deeply common well which
once immersed in tells us there is
nothing else to search for.
 
Like snails who curl in shells
to be tossed by the sea, the soul
finds a life to inhabit.
 
So close your eyes and chance
to see your self from the inside.

Kali the Liberator of Truth

A yantra is a symbol representing something to be internalized in the human consciousness. Each yantra radiates the specific divine energy that is embedded within it, and can serve as a doorway for the divine to enter into both our internal and external worlds. The geometric form aids in balancing and focusing the mind and bringing us in touch with its powerful source energy.

The Hindu Goddess Kali is a fierce liberator. She embodies the power of action and transformation. She is said to destroy anything that is not absolute truth, fiercely devouring the self-centered views of reality. While she is known as a liberator and destroyer of all that is not truth, Kali’s essence is Divine Love. When we surrender to that Divine Love, we find that all is possible.

The Kali Yantra shown is embedded with the transformative energy of change. According to Hindu tradition, inviting Kali’s essence into your life must be a conscious and mindful decision because she will not stop until the transformation has occurred. What it means to surrender to “what is” in our lives, is why we often find change so difficult, and ultimately why change is so important as a part of our ongoing evolutionary journey. As the northern hemisphere heads into the spring and the southern hemisphere shifts into autumn, the whole world is entering into a time of birth and death – a reawakening of life in the northern hemisphere and a surrender of life in the southern hemisphere. Birth and death are inseparable. In order to evolve and give birth to the new we must be willing to let go of what was. And in the same way, letting go of what was opens the door for new beginnings.

Quote of the Week by Andrew Cohen

Spirit Is One and Many

Spirit is generally seen and understood to be the grand unifying principle behind all apparent difference. In its revelation, there is the undeniable recognition that we have never been separate and there is only One. But the contours of that which is only One, as it becomes manifest, contain countless dimensions and levels that are not all the same. This is very important to understand. Why? Because our capacity to manifest that which is highest here on Earth—wisdom, insight, evolutionarily enlightened awareness, and deep, impersonal, spiritual love—is entirely dependent upon our being able to discern what can at times be subtle differences. Our own evolution at the deepest level of our being depends upon our willingness to strive consistently to make philosophically and morally challenging distinctions.
Andrew Cohen

Spiritual Physics

by Maya Christobel

“We live in a REDEFINING moment of history.  So, it would seem logical that each of us would be mirroring this moment in our lives.  Life is chaotic and uncertain right now.  Many of us have the capacity to feel all dimensions at one time: Physical, emotional, intuitive, mental and spiritual, as well as other dimensions that exist simultaneously or parallel to the reality we are in.  All of our sensory experience registers in a complex way and our mind makes every attempt to interpret, but it is a very difficult amount of energy for anyone to process in our unevolved bodies and minds. We  have not yet learned to center or focus on the data coming in from a purely intuitive and physical channel. 

So, when your mind is activated and does what it has always done, you interpret the incoming experience with old outdated and delusional constructs and belief systems and can be very overwhelmed with energy. 
The key to managing all these energies is the heart ,not the mind. But our species is living with contracted hearts which are not open to processing or transmuting these complex energies.  As a result we can become ill, dis-oriented and depressed.

Then, as you also know, the backdrop of energy in our culture and the world  is producing fear and pain, prompted by the influences of the cosmic forces bearing down on our planet.  There is a huge increase in energy that is chaotic and fear driven, also a magnification of energies due to the breakdown of our atmosphere, global warming and a shift in the EM energy on our planet.  That is why the mundane SEEMS so difficult to focus on, but in reality, is the most important practice you can do.  The mundane will ground you.  Eating, cooking, cleaning, gardening, walking the dog, taking a shower, are all ways to stay focused.  Then as you “pick up” information or feel strong feelings that many times are simply not your own, but floating debris, cast off emotions from all around you, then when they float by or stick to you or overwhelm you, you can let that energy go into the very things you do day to day.  Send the excess energy into the ground or into the sink with the dishes…consciously.

What I have mentioned is an external way you can manage the energy.   It is applicable to the negativity that is floating in the world around you.  You must also manage the energies internally and psychically.  Breathing is essential, exercise is essential, the proper food is essential, but meditation and quiet reflection, imagining and creative expression, identifying the feelings and releasing them, these are important ways to mange the energy and stay focused in hard times. The engine for all these ways of processing energy is the heart.  Love is the energy that balances out all other ‘out of balance’ or negative energies. 

 When you become afraid about where money is going to come from, you are submitting to a flow of energy all around you that is a cultural fear about money.  Therefore, first of all, turn off the news.  Only check headlines on your computer once in awhile.   Do not bombard yourself with outside information that is steeped in fear.  Everyone is afraid about jobs and money and security and personal resources.  Although circumstances are difficult at this moment, your major experience is that you become a conduit for the fear that is all around you.  Managing fear is essential since it causes physical harm and illness. without a full and open heart you cannot successfullychange or manage energy.

Fear in our world is at an all time peak, and  the weather around you on your planet is brewing up a storm of its own, the volcanoes are expressing themselves and so on.  As you can see, it will take more effort on your part to say centered and focused and not get all “riled up” so to speak.  The question you do not ask is what does it matter anyway?  What does it really matter that you do not have the money you desire?  What does it really matter that you could die, or loose a house or have to grow your own food?  What does it really matter at all? 

Your Spirit is wanting to evolve and when you hold yourself in a place of fear and insecurity, doing mental harm to yourself with your ongoing thoughts and worry, your Spirit is held down and put in a cage waiting for you to relax and simply allow the realities around you to pass through and by you.  So change those realities.  Make a new stance in your life to only do what brings you joy. To play in your life.

Most us us are saying “how can I be happy and paint or draw or dig in my garden if I do not have money.”  Then you frantically try to “make money”.  You are contracted and edgy when you try so hard and that does not allow creativity to flow in the direction of money.  You think you need to draw money to you or security and resources toward you, when in fact it does not really work that way.  You create a flow of energy in and around you that is abundant and the Universe matches that energy with abundant energy.  

If you have happiness and joy and not worry and fear, then that happiness and joy flows into the Universe which then mirrors the energy back toward you.  It is spiritual physics.  What you put out, your get back.  You have always thought that the laws of ‘what goes up must come down’ or ‘everything has an equal and opposite reaction’ are the primary laws,  but in truth, everything has a “unified reaction”,  a reaction of like to like.  Holism…you are happy and happy things happen, you feel abundant and imagine abundance and abundance happens.  But, if you feel scared and worried and frightened then that is what your experience will be. These emotions will shut down or contract your heart ,which will eventually show up as heart failure, heart attacks, a hardened heart.

We need to face our diminishing patterns, to deal with the ways we each hold ourself in prison with our fears or oour insecurities.  You have a wealth of experience that lets you completely KNOW how the Universe is simply always supporting you and there for your happiness and growth.  You need to remind yourself of this every day.  This is not a time to be Doing everything you can to make money or create the life you think you want.  This is a time that you should be Being every part of yourself every day and letting the laws of the Universe operate the ways it does. 

This will feel paradoxical in that all around you you will see scary things and changes that will be difficult.  This is but one reality.  You can be your own weather front, your own sustenance, your own joyful heart.   Allow yourself to play, even if you feel you have to reinvent your life.  Allow yourself to play even if you need to make a phone call or design a brochure, or clean the cat box and pay your bills.  Allow the Universe, your guides, your faith to do the work of creating abundance even in times like these.  Inspiration is the key.  Do for yourself and for others what inspires you…all the time.  Learning and practicing living in and with an openheart.

Ideologies separate us.

Dreams and anguish bring us together.

–Eugene Ionesco

 

 

Reflections By Mark Nepo: March 31, 2009

 I was at a conference in Florida, a Jewish-Catholic gathering in which believers were trying to understand each other’s suffering. At last, there was a tiredness of debating ideas and varying points of faith. And weathered old souls gathered like birds appearing from trees to nibble at God’s bread finally left out in the open.

 

It was late in the day, amid the scattering of coffee cups, that a tall, thin man with clumps of white hair and thick glasses shuffled to the microphone perched in the aisle. His back was slightly curved in a permanent bow. He started several times, clearing his throat, as if climbing the years to this ordinary day. He had been in Buchenwald and, in those early months of ’45, he knew the end of the war was near. A sudden air of liberation filled the yard with whispers. And one day, for some reason, he felt it was very close, the way birds know a storm is near by how the wind skirts the leaves. So, he hid in a garbage can for seven days, enduring the dark and the hunger and the largeness of every noise without sight.

 

After an unthinkable hiding, he felt the lid start to lift and didn’t know if it was a German about to shoot him or an American bringing him back to a life he could barely remember. In that instant, he almost collapsed from the pounding of his heart. It took a few seconds for his eyes to focus. He was still there. It was then he saw the shape of the helmet. It was American and he began to weep.

 

There was a profound silence in the room as the old man wiped his eyes. As he started to shuffle back to his chair, another old man stood up, his voice shaking as he uttered, “I was that soldier,” and they teetered to each other and fell into each other’s arms.

 

I don’t know how to describe what happened in that moment. In all outward appearance, it looked quite ordinary. Nothing around us stopped. Traffic came and went. The ocean surf kept breaking. Young boys kept stocking shelves in nearby supermarkets. But two broken pieces in the foundation of the Universe fit perfectly together and everyone in the room knew it. And more than these two were healed. We were all healed in a place that is hard to reach. It is strange yet constant that the breaking apart in the Universe is often loud while the coming together is often quiet.

 

Things will always break apart and come together. Yet, in our pain, we often lose sight that each cocoon must break so the next thing can fly. It is our curse and blessing to die and be born so many times.

 

 

 

Notes from the Prarie:  By Maya Christobel

The winds are howling here in Tulsa.  The first tornado alert of the season and it seems all but natural to me now.  Funny how new weather fronts can seem so alarming and throw us off balance until the weather front passes and then reconfigures over and over again until it is simply…commonplace.  Adaptation is a remarkable thing.

I have been here in Tulsa for two months today.  The winter landscape is now a lush budding bouquet of color and fragrance.  Spring this early seems so foriegn and not one time of shoveling snow for over a year now.  I do appreciate that aspect.

These months have been brimming with moving, settling my mother into Assisted Living so she can start her own new chapter at 90, and building life from the ground up once again.  I admit that this time, “starting over” has been exhausting or maybe the move came at a time when after my previous year, my exhaustion was well under way.

I am “watching” my new city and all the inhabitants.  I am carefully constructing the new me I want to bring here with the hopes of doing far less Therapies and more creative endeavors.  Yet the economy presents an urgency for solid income, so I am finding myself wandering back toward the certainty of income with my usual work in Voice Stress Assessment.  I am uneasy with the fit this time but understand that the times we are in necessitate compromises.

Reinventing a self at nearly 60 is formidable.  I have far more fears of changing the staus quo in myself than I would have thought, yet the people who embrace my presence here are my champions for being all I can be and have brought love and acceptance to my life in no short order.  I am so grateful.

My writing as you can see has been on the back burner once again as I do the mundane talks and lectures, endless social meetings, introducing myself to Tulsa and Tulsa to me.  But Spring finds me now more in a place of feeling modestly settled and ready to resume my various writing projects.  Where I am going is a mystery still.

So, I will commit once again to weekly reflections and notes on life.   I am not continuing with my blog regarding “Letters from the Cosmos” though, since one of my decisions is to compile them into a book.  So, please leave me comments that I may know how you are out there and how you are doing, your thoughts and feelings and ideas on our changing and challenging times.

Faithfully Maya

Have I Told You?

By Maya Christobel

 

Have I told you, you are the love of my life?

Have I told you, you are my beacon,

 My blazing light,  my truest heart?

I am certain I have, but never enough.

Never with the depth of feeling that exists in me,

 Nor the broadest smile possible.

Not on the phone when you cannot see my eyes,

Or even when I hug you hello

After such a long absence. 

Never enough.

So, I am telling you now,

Even after all these years,

The hardships,

The times I forgot what is important in life,

I am telling you today that I love you so much

That tears always come

At the sight of your picture,

The sound of your voice,

The beauty

That is only you,

Always you,

All of the time.

 

 

Sniffing Out What Is Sacred:  Mark Nepo 3/23/09

 

Sometimes a glance, a few casual words, fragments of a melody floating through the quiet air of a summer evening, a book that accidentally comes into our hands, a poem or a memory-laden fragrance, may bring about the impulse which changes and determines our whole life.

—Llama Govinda

 

When I think of the times I’ve been lost in my life, each had the feel of an earthquake that upended something foundational. At the time, I was hurt, frightened, disoriented, unsure how to go on. Yet who would have guessed that one foundation broken apart would reveal another.

 

I was barely ten when I asked my parents about God. They looked at each other and flatly shut the door, saying, “We don’t believe in God.” It was the way they closed off all conversation that made me feel orphaned in my inquiries. I felt completely on my own. This was my first sense of death—the death of home. But it caused me to venture further into my own firsthand experience of everything larger than me. Ironically, because of how they shut me out, I solidified my bond with the mysteries.

 

As a teenager, I fell in love for the first time, and I fell deeply. She was beautiful and had questions of her own. In my innocence, I imbued her as the keeper of all that was holy. When she left me for another, I was devastated and darkly lost for almost two years. But one day, when exhausted of my very colorful despair, I sat in a field, drawn to watch the bees pulling nectar from the dew-heavy flowers. I was stopped by the beauty that keeps on creating itself no matter what we experience. Here, the death of my first love had led me to the unshakeable bottom of beauty.

 

At the age of thirty-six, in the midst of my struggle with cancer—between angiograms and MRIs—Grandma died. It was my first taste of inconsolable loss. For no one loved me like Grandma. She believed in me more than I could comprehend. And she was gone. The ground beneath me had split apart. Within months, the cancer resurfaced in a rib in my back. I felt utterly lost. It was the death of my faith. My rib was removed. When I woke on the other side, after having nothing to rely on, I discovered a deeper faith—one that exists like gravity, independent of our wishes and regrets.

 

It was almost ten years after cancer, when I was forty-five, that my former wife Ann and I separated after helping to save each other’s lives. To my surprise, several of my deepest friends, who had held me during surgeries and chemo, cast me out. This made me question the very ground by which I enter friendship. Not only could I no longer trust those I so loved, but I could no longer trust my own assessment of closeness. I felt isolated, and what I knew that was dependable, within me and around me, was no bigger than my palm. This was a death of friendship that I am still recovering from. But it forced me to fall into the bedrock of a deeper self which sniffs out what is sacred with the wonder of an animal—independent of what others think.

 

Still, when forty-eight, I learned that the press that had published my epic poem Fire Without Witness had gone out of business. In doing so, they had destroyed almost 1,500 copies without ever contacting me. Though I was experienced enough to know that this was just an external loss, it punctured me to my core. It had taken me ten years to birth that book. It was my deepest journey into the Unconscious. Try as I did to accept this brush with impermanence, I felt defeated and grew depressed.

 

Months later, I was driving a rental car from Albuquerque to Santa Fe to see my good friend Wayne when the old mountains baking under the big southwest sky somehow snapped me back into life. If they could outlive native names and Spanish names and American names, I could outlive this.

 

Now, at fifty-five, I still miss Grandma terribly. But now her presence is foundational. She is in the silence that holds my missing rib, in the flowers waiting for the bees to find their nectar, and in my lifelong sense of God as everything larger than me. As I consider where I’ve been, I realize that, at every turn, I’ve been broken of my preferences, and so I find, to my delight, that I am interested in everything.

 

Change is Afoot

Dear Ones,

I am approaching the one year mark of being here with my Mother.  Not one aspect of what I imagined this time would be about has been remotely true.  It reminds me of childbirth.  You do it with only a faint understanding of what it means to carry and deliver a baby but the Universal compelling call to birth overrides every reality or fear, since if any woman knew in advance how painful the process can be we might just reconsider.   It seems as if this principle works for each of us when change and growth are necessary but we need a catalyst.  My mother dying was an urgent compelling call that I instinctually answered and then attached my own expectations and assumptions to.  But, when the reality set in as the REAL nature of the decision to be here became evident, I found myself standing in territory that I could not have expected nor imagined.  I think this is what it really means to move in the Flow of life. 

So, my mother nearly died three times and then came back stronger than ever. And then a critical experience with my daughter’s health, who is now so much better and building her life differently. As a result of these two loved ones facing life and death issues, I faced every buried demon from my past, faced every fear I avoided in my life and saw more of my shadow self than I knew existed.  In short, I have become a different person.  My imagined time here to HELP my mother was nothing of the sort.  My mother called me home to myself and to birth my own truth and lay to rest the old, manufactured, fear based self I had been carrying with me most of my life.  What a transformation of death and birth but nothing that could have been expected.

My mother Betty is now in Assisted Living and more joyful and alive than I have seen her in my entire life.  She has a ministry there since she is the most outgoing and healthy one present.  She cares for so many and brings light into their lives after living her own life in so much darkness of the heart.  I am astonished.  The place she lives has people dying all the time.  It keeps my mother out of her denial and has created an appreciation for the time she has left to live.  (Which could be forever the rate she is going.)

And in the process of her coming alive and not dying, so have I.  What I have offered her here, living in her life with her, is not nearly as vast as what my mother gave me by nearly dying and calling me home.  Each time I thought to leave and possibly escape the pain of transformation I was in, she nearly died again and I stayed longer to move further into my own transformation until I feel I am finished for the time being. Energy lighted and changes, doors began to open, inspiration returned.

Another gift came from my time here.  Matthew who came to help for the summer has stayed on since his experience has been identical to mine.  We have both been Waking UP in Oklahoma and could say volumes about why this is true.  In the process we wiped clean so many aspects of our ten year relationship and built a new one filled with independence and love, partnering and personal quest, togetherness and detachment.  We are always a work in progress, but our time here with one another has landed us in a space of creative relationship and loving kindness that was yet another unexpected product of a choice to move to the Prairie.

Yet, Shawnee Oklahoma has been physically and socially a very empty place for us.  A few months ago we were encourage to “get out of Dodge” and visit Tulsa Oklahoma which had a Whole Foods Market we were craving and the largest Unitarian Church in the United States.  Sixteen- hundred diverse and colorful members.  I had not set foot into a church for nearly 30 years, so this was quite a departure for me.  Tulsa having been settled and created by New Yorkers, Bostonians and having an East Coast mentality, as well as being a city with more Art Deco Architecture in the US, surprised us and the church, well the only thing I can say is an Arc filled with loving, open, mindful, spiritual and alive people.  So after traveling there twice a week for some time we have decided to move there at the end of January.  To try out what we imagine being another transformative experience while continuing to be open to wherever the Flow takes us.  What an amazing time.

And I am so aware that these changes for me, for my life, for my mother and friends are embedded in the Mayan Calendar’s Sixth Day  that began in November.  I am including below a short description of the energy for this next year that we all will be challenged by and enfolded in. 

So, I will continue to allow my Blog, www.theheartspace.wordpress.com and www.mayachristobel.wordpress.com  (devoted to channeled material), to flow even if not focused on my time with my Mother and hope it will illuminate the transformative time we are all in, by sharing with you my own journey.  I cannot thank each of you enough for all you have done in the support of me and of my family and send you love and blessings.  My new phone and address is below as well as new website.

Thank you,

Maya

THE SIXTH DAY IN SHORT

The Sixth Day (2009) we return to a period of “Enlightenment.” This is the time of flowers for the plant. For you personally, it was adolescence.  In human history this was the creation of the first tools, the first attempts at agriculture and constructed shelter, the Renaissance and, most recently, the Flower Children Movement of the 60’s. The Sixth Night (2110), one last period of Dark in the cycle follows.  In the plant’s life the flowers wilt and die setting the stage for fruit development or of seedpods that will dry. This is what happened to the Maya civilization right on queue. Throughout human history there have been conflicts and revolts during this period, the most recent of these having been the Viet Nam War.

Now the Sixth Day of the Galactic Underworld begins [November 12, 2008] with Yohualticitl, the goddess of birth. This period is the renaissance of each cycle and this time lasts until November 2009. It is the time in which the flower blossoms. Look with in to propagate your flower. Grow spiritually and remain centered. Stay true to yourself, stay connected to community and the environment.  Practice reciprocity and random acts of kindness for balance and connection.

This is all very representative of our nation’s events over the past decade. So this ancient knowledge is very relevant to us today. During this transition, things may very well become even more chaotic, before they improve. However remember to keep focused the big picture and do your best to spread and maintain the positive energy that the world needs so greatly right now.

The last Sixth “Day” was the time of Beatniks, Flower Children, mass spiritual transformation, orbital satellites and global communication systems or distilled down to its essence, profound change.

The Sixth “Day” of the last cycle was the beginning of the European Renaissance.

 

Our Fierce Impulse to Live by Mark Nepo

 

From a spiritual perspective, attachment is the complex of dynamics that bind our capacity for love to self-centered desires. The root of the word, a-tache, means nailed to. Spiritual traditions see attachment as nailing our capacity for love to something other than what it was meant for.
-Gerald May

At first, our fierce impulse to live is bent on survival, fending off events and each other. But then, by some ever-shifting miracle, our stubbornness is broken and we are moved, if blessed, through that primitive survival into a deeper reality in which our lives depend wholly on each other, the way blood relies on organs to keep it flowing.

A complex journey stands between our primitive want to survive and this more humble recognition of how everything is connected. That journey takes many of us through the purging of our attachments. Or, as Gerald May so powerfully puts it, we must live through the nailing of our capacity to love to certain ideas, people, and things.

Just how does attachment start? It’s hard to say, but I know, for me, like many, it began when as a boy my want to live and my want to be loved became confused. Pretty soon, I nailed my sense of survival to the idea that life was only possible if in love. When love relationships failed, I grew desperate to make them work, to make them last, until I gave myself away as kindling to keep the fire of life as I imagined it going.

Often, our personal forms of attachment grow out of painful situations that we spend much of our lives trying to correct. My mother was an angry person. She seethed and smoldered much of the time. It was like living near a volcano, never sure when it might erupt. I’m not sure what painful situation she was reacting to. But I quickly learned how to absorb her heat and threw my attention on her like water. But it was never enough. There was always more fire than I had water. And even when leaving home, I looked for fires to put out, thought this was love. I became attached to the idea and kept thinking, “If I could only find more water.”

Once our fierce impulse to live is nailed to what we want or think we want, that fierceness keeps us from the direct joy of living. And feeling cut off, we work harder and longer at getting what we want. If worked at hard enough and long enough, our attachment can deepen into addiction-that is, we can make a god of attachment. In fact, we could say that addiction is a collapse of attention by which we pursue one thing repeatedly, as if that one thing will give us everything, as if that one thing sucked on enough will take away the pain of living.

Whatever the object of such focus-alcohol, drugs, love, sex, success, money, the thrill of adventure, or the tumble of crisis-addiction is attachment run wild until, like a self-replicating Midas, everything we touch turns into our troubled self. Ironically, addiction attaches to everything in its path, nailing our troubled self everywhere we go, when all we want is to lead our self out of its trouble.

Yet the skin between reverence and addiction is thin and always near. It is humbling that we can so easily aim for one and land in the other. When attached, we can become preoccupied with one thing (the touch of a loved one or a painful image of ourselves that we need to drown) until it prevents us from being touched by anything. When we can let go of our self-interest and simply lean into our capacity to love, we can be surprised by a tender strength that appears for caring openly for the smallest thing (a wave breaking or a stranger laughing) until it becomes a doorway to everything.

It seems that compassion is only possible when we dare not to nail down our capacity to love. Only when letting our impulse to live flow without preference or judgment-in essence, loving everything-can all skins of separation vanish, at least for the moment. In this way, when I am hurtful or cold or vengeful, I can feel at once both my striking out and the hurt it causes-as if I’m doing this to myself. Likewise, when I am giving or listening or loving, I can feel at once both my ache to care and the comfort it stirs-as if I’m doing this to myself. This is the mystery of compassion at the core of all the spiritual traditions: when we dare to open our hearts to life as it happens, we are doing all this to ourselves. For the gift of compassion, entered without hesitation, is that we are humbled by the truth that-despite our separate bodies and personal histories and all the nailing down-we are each other.

It is both troubling and freeing to realize that everyone is born with a fire within that we try to ignite by rubbing our hearts against the things of the world. The feel of the fire coming up from within is what we call passion. The rubbing of our hearts against the things of the world is the purpose of experience. When we are centered in our capacity to love, the friction of experience ignites our fire; and the edge and lick of its flame is curiosity and wonder, and the fire is illuminating. When we are divided and nailed to our desires, we simply burn up. We are capable of both and often shine and burn by turns.

The gentle love of everything makes a life of being lighted, while the pitfalls of attachment and addiction make burning up a way of life. A thin edge of grace often separates the two. Often, we need each other to pull us out of burning up. The mystery is that, while burning, we can still love. While burning, we can let love in. When the love overcomes the burn, we somehow cease being eaten by the fire and are warmed by the fire. In these blessed moments, or moods, or even days, we stop looking for love and become love. We cease being lighted and become light.
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These reflections are excerpts from several books, including a new book of poems, Surviving Has Made Me Crazy, CavanKerry Press, and a new book of spiritual non-fiction, Facing the Lion, Being the Lion: Inner Courage and Where It Lives, Red Wheel/Conari Press. For more info, please visit  www.MarkNepo.com .

The New Year…The Sixth Day

 

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

—Henri Bergson

Hugs are Better than Presents

With the holiday season I am acutely aware of how grateful I am for life.  Shopping for the perfect gift, wrapping presents in glittery paper and buying out the grocery store seem like traditions that have faded into the background of my life this season.  I am in California watching the sun set on the ocean and the sun rise in my daughter Sasha’s life who is recovering after a health crisis that opened our hearts to life and death issues and to one another in deeper ways.

I have shopped little and sat more in the company of both my girls as we laugh our way toward Christmas day, go to church together for the first time in our lives, make cards out of buttons and bows and cook healthy food.  I am in Nirvana after one of the hardest years of my life.

Our deteriorating economy and the state of the world is no longer the backdrop to daily life but is becoming our lives,  requiring each of us to shift and change and open to new possibilities.  The gift this Christmas for all of us is the grace and power that each of us possess to take any circumstance, any negative feeling, all fear, anxiety and uncertainty into joy, happiness and opportunity to grow in consciousness and love.

So, I send everyone in my life boat-loads of love, oodles of hugs and deep gratitude for your presence in my life.

Blessings in this the Mayan 6th day,

Maya