Viva Les Questions!

"It can't just be about others because it's too depleting. It can't just be about ourselves because it's too lonely." ~Jason Garner

Everywhere everyday opportunities arise to help ourselves and to help others but where is the balance? How can we next make the right decision to help ourselves or to help others? What kind of mastermind can hone in on the right thing today to do right now?

These are an awful lot of questions. But I have found when I ask questions it is not my responsibility to answer them. It is only my responsibility to form them from a deep and meaningful place within my heart. And I know if I do this, from this place, the answers will come to me easily.

Takes a load off doesn't it? 

It is so great to know you don't have to have the answers. You only have to ask the RIGHT question! 

These questions are both the key to our suffering and the key to our joy. I am certain you are totally aware we all have easy access to our own questions. They just naturally exist in us all. They are as individual to each of us ad our own particular journeys. And they all contain the answers we are seeking within them!

Just ask them. 

Just ask them WITH FEELING from a sincere place deep inside your heart knowing in the asking the answer lies. 

I have found great peace in allowing myself to just live in my questions like this  - for I know the answers will come. 

Got any questions?

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Joyful Creativity

       Maui - Polynesian Trickster God

Excerpts from IT'S BETTER TO BE A TRICKSTER THAN A MARTYR by Elizabeth Gilbert

"There is another way to be creative that does not make a fetish out of suffering. There is an older way, a richer way, a more generative way — the way human beings had been making art for about 30,000 years, before Europeans started taking things all too seriously. This is the path of playful collaboration with the mysteries of inspiration. This is the path that says you are neither the slave to your muse, nor its master — but that you are its partner, and that the two of you (artistic mystery and you) can delight in each other. This is the path that says creativity is a weird but never-boring dance, and that you are allowed to actually enjoy it regardless of how it turns out. This is the path that focuses more on the wonderful strangeness of the process and less on the result. This is the path that does not worship suffering and torment, and does not respect the reality police who say that life is nothing but a grim march of pain. 

This is the path of the trickster, not the martyr. The trickster (represented forever in world mythology as the fox, the crow, the coyote, the monkey) sees through our delusions of seriousness and exposes the play underneath all our drama. The trickster says, 'You are welcome to die for your cause if you really want to, but I'm not here to spend my life suffering.'

The trickster understands that all this world is temporary, all of it is shifting, all of it is nonsense, all of it is fair game for delight. The trickster never dies a grim death in a walk-up tenement while suffering romantically from tuberculous. The trickster doesn't compete, doesn't compare, doesn't beat his head against the wall, doesn't wrestle demons, doesn't try to dominate mysteries that were never meant to be dominated in the first place. The trickster just keeps on PLAYING. The trickster is slippery and sly, wry and wise, always looking for the secret door, the hidden stairway, the funhouse mirror, the sideways way of looking at things — and the trickster always endures." 

Yes, yes, yes! Will you come PLAY with me?

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Monkeying around with Religion

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we see in them.” Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton was a trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky, he was a poet, mystic and a student of comparative religion.

Some may have observed a recent shift toward writing about contemplation, religion and spirituality. The catalyst for this is an e-course called "Crafting your own Religion" in which I am a participate. It is being taught by Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul , amongst other books on religion, mind and spirit. 

Today the class was asked to consider perhaps taking a few practices from monastic or cloistered traditions toward crafting our own religions, i.e. taking a deeper dive into things! TM used the word "serious". This sounded serious to me suggesting we take religion seriously. And it felt like a red flag. I have never cottoned to folks who take religion too seriously. But leaning into something to craft a thing most to my own liking is the whole point of the class. So - from my heart - here are vows I might subscribe to and some text I might like to see illuminated in a manuscript.

Thomas Moore says, "Vows help us to avoid forgetfulness and distraction & anchor our vision." Here are my three simple vows:

To be responsible with all human relationships, i.e., be transparent, vulnerable, present & available

To do my best in all things without judgement or expectation

To laugh and be joyful

My scriptorium text (currently) would be 

"Don't think of yourself as an intestinal tract and a tangle of nerves in the skull, that will not work unless you drink coffee. Think of yourself as incandescent power, illuminated perhaps and forever talked to by God and his messengers... Think if Tiffany's made a mosquito, how wonderful we would think it was!" ~ Brenda Ueland 

The vows and quote above appear to advocate an innocence or child's eye view. But from my current perspective this is a fine and wonderful thing. For to partition off from our waking selves "childlike wonder" seems most forgetful indeed!

If you were to monk-ey around with monastic ways what would you do?

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Enlightment at Gunpoint

Looking back, my Religious/Spiritual timeline begins with casual Sunday School for one summer followed by communion and a photo of me in a dress in front of a huge pink azalea. NO inner connections were made. Everything was external and ceremonial.

During my teen years I was hit by a car and felt my soul move away from my body - no tunnel, no bright light but clearly understood at that moment that there are distinct differences between the two. Still no internal connections were felt. It was just another fact of life.

From teen years thru college I relied on my wits and which way the wind was blowing. Still no existential thoughts, feelings, actions or questions. I graduated and had a successful career during my 20s and 30s.

I married somewhat late in life. My husband, a trained Physicist turned computer programmer, was decidedly scientific and I saw myself in complete opposition to his religious skepticism. Still neither he nor I took stands one way or the other. I just led a life of knowing all of life's challenges were somehow to be overcome (dare I say gifts). And in so overcoming growth was inevitable. We supported eachother and created a life together of ease and comfort. There was no need to look further than my own doorstep or my own nose.

Then he died. This is what can be termed "enlightenment at gunpoint." Then I wanted to know more. Then I needed to inspect myself and this life to help me make best choices and become adept at living differently than before. For the very first time in my life feelings were cascading from me and I needed to know how to deal with them.

So here I am today reading everything I can and spending more and more time introspectively coming to know "knowing" and what that means. In a way I see my evolution as familiar territory. I am again, like during my young adulthood, relying on my wits. And those "winds" that propel me forward today are most likely the same that sped me along my path then. I just experience them now as born of intuition for I am now more awake and living more deliberately.

Timelines can be illuminating!

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I will not sugar coat it for you

Look - I will not sugar coat it for you, if you will not sugar coat it for me. This is Authenticity. 

"Authentic carries a connotation of authoritative certification that an object is what it is claimed to be."   From dictionary.com

I can mostly be counted on to be authentic, except when I am unsure of myself, or if I am scared or if I am nervous or if I feel unsafe, or if I am living unconsciously. But in all other cases I am most definitely a genuine and real person.

 
All one needs to do is throw others off the scent with a couple of “not so real cues” and if they are following you…are you following me...we have thrown them (and ourselves) off track. No good can come of this. Anything sugar coated or affected, for whatever reason, will be at best a pale echo of our selves and at worst an oddly shaped mass without any reference to who we really are. We are then just a stiff wind, a good downpour, or an army of ants away from havoc, ruination and carnage. No wonder we are so nervous to share our bone fide selves!

I have lived this life of being 'what I needed to become' to get what I thought I wanted. I have even moved mountains to make things happen exactly as I thought they should. My 11 years on the road as a stand up comedienne is proof positive of my earth moving skills. And in the end, like all tales of the misbegotten – great word meaning unlawfully obtained or badly conceived – I was not where I wanted to be.
  
But the great news is I can move mountains! I can create what I want to demostrate in my life. I am a powerful and sensitive creature with love and law on my side. Just got to do it from a more authentic place this time.
 
Does the word authority have any relation to authentic? How about author, is this a distant cousin to them both? I often struggle with my own authority. Who am I? What right do I have? Authority refers to rankings, officialness and control. How often do I feel I rank right up there or have control? And I am most certainly NEVER official about anything. I hold no office which says so.
   
Authenticity means genuine, actual, real.

Authority means power, force, official.

Author means writer, progenitor, equivalent to aug (ere) to increase (see augment).

Augment means to make larger, raise a half step.

It turns out that though they share similar letters their origins are not really related…unless you are me. I see a definite connection between being authentic and that giving me the authority to share my real self as an author. But most telling is the final word which describes the canopy under which I create – Augment - to make larger, to raise a half step. 

This feels soooo right.  


What feels very right to you?

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