My Burning Bush

I sometimes do a Vision Board Collage or Treasure Map for the New Year instead of just a list of goals.  Last year I made two Vision Boards.  They were somewhat different but on both I had drawn a tree with leaves pointed upward with sparks shooting out.

Throughout the year I would look at the boards and wonder what was significant about that tree.  A few months ago the story of the burning bush came to mind and since I’m not familiar with the Bible, I googled the symbol of the burning bush, read a little about it and then forgot about it until today.

Reading something spiritual first thing in the morning is my routine.  While reading this morning my mind was wandering thinking about doing a Vision Board this year and then thought of my burning bush drawing again.  My mind went back to reading my book, I turned the page on my Kindle and couldn’t believe the next thing I read…..

“Do you want to have an epiphany? Do you want to stand in front of the burning bush? Here’s my burning bush…..”  I love these moments of synchronicity and know it must be important to be so obvious.

Before these words, the author was talking about clearing your mind to order to be able to  follow the voice or intuition.  That’s when it all came together for me.  In the story the burning bush was the voice of God talking to Moses.  Moses didn’t want to listen, seemed crazy to listen to a voice coming out of a bush. He resisted several times but eventually listened to the voice and things did work out in the end.

If I take this as a message for me it would be to skip the same list of goals and resolutions I have every year,  try to listen to my higher power and at the very least develop a better connection so that the voice becomes clearer.

 

My Brother – The Guide

The last time I blogged here my mother had passed away. It’s been a year since my younger brother passed away suddenly and totally unexpected. He had guided my mother through her passing the year before. He was a crisis care Hospice nurse and he was good at it. His life’s work was guiding people toward that unknown path.  I would guess that he guided literally hundreds of people through their last journey.

When it came his time, he didn’t have a Guide.  He didn’t need one. He took off without waiting for a Guide…it was a familiar path for him.  He took off totally alert, watching the process and I’m sure that’s the way he would have wanted it.

I wish I would have had more time to discuss his death and dying experiences during his career.  What I do know is that he talked about “the mystery” and that there are no answers until you walk the Path yourself. He seemed okay with the mystery of it all.   What I’m trying to learn from him is to accept that some things are just unknown to us and to be content with just being in awe of the mystery.  Working on it….Still miss him everyday.

She Passed Away

My mother passed away a year ago today October 7, 2017.   “Passed Away” is a common term used when someone dies. There doesn’t seem to be a definition for who or what is passing away. This is my account of witnessing the passing away.

My mother was 92 when she “passed” and had been in failing health for a few months but mentally still sharp as a tack.  She was a strong woman with a strong personality and since I inherited some of those qualities we would clash occasionally.  Not enough to strain our relationship but enough that we respected each other’s views when we disagreed.

She was in Hospice for the last few days.  There are many things I remember of those days but what remains in my mind is witnessing her personality slipping away the last three days when she stayed in bed, slept most of the day and then stopped responding to us. During that slipping away aspects of her personality began to leave until there was nothing left except her lying empty in bed in silence. My memories of any personality clashes of the past were also passing away and now a year later I cannot find them at all.  However, there are many vivid happy memories that will always remain.

While witnessing this gradual removal of the mask of the personality it became clear that we will all have a mask to leave behind. When the mask is gone the naked newborn we once were reappears again empty of any ideas, habits, behaviors or perceptions picked up along the way.

No matter what your beliefs of life after death, I believe I witnessed the mask of her personality pass away leaving a clean slate ready to do whatever it is we do next. This has made me more aware of how the outward personality is only a mask and what hides behind it is what is real. I am grateful and consider this experience her last gift to me.

 

Tell me a Story

At this time of year I’m reminded of the time I took my young daughter with me for a quick visit to a funeral home…not really anyone she knew so I didn’t think it would have an impact.  On the way home she became tearful and said she didn’t want to die. Not anticipating this at such a young age, I began searching my mind for something I could use to comfort her that she would understand….the Easter story came to mind.

We were not church goers but the preschool had been teaching the Easter story so I knew she would be familiar with it.  When I told her about the resurrection and that Jesus really didn’t die but came back again in a different form, I could see the tension in her face leave as she contemplated the whole story.  It was enough to comfort her and dissolve some of the fear…after all everyone she trusted was telling the same story.

What this incident reminds me of is the significance of stories for things that are fearful and unexplainable.  Some keep the same beliefs throughout their lives and are comforted by them with no desire to change the story line.  I have changed my comfort story many times throughout my life….even realizing they are comfort stories can create another story.

With things that are unexplainable, the best we can do is in the form of stories, metaphors or pointers.   I can get caught up in arguing the validity of certain stories but at this time of year I am again reminded that it probably doesn’t matter about the content of the story because in the end it’s all about the comfort of the recipient.

Chana Mae

 
 The holidays are about over and once again I went past the point of enjoyment into the realm of overwhelmed. Cooking is not my favorite thing so it doesn’t take long for resentment of spending so much time in the kitchen to show up.
This time I spent a lot of that kitchen time thinking of my grandmother, Chana Mae, who was an exceptional cook. She was a young widow in the early 1950’s and took a job as a cook on a large farm cooking for farm hands. The owner let her have some chickens and she became an entrepreneur with a thriving egg business.

My memories this Christmas had to do with her cooking Christmas and other holiday dinners for her family.  She had to be a master organizer because everything was made from scratch…including catching the chickens for dinner. Besides a big dinner there were several homemade pies, whipped toppings, cakes and candy. I wondered if she felt overwhelmed…if she resented the time spent in the kitchen. If so she never let on, I always felt it was done out of love and she enjoyed it. 

So my memories of Chana Mae in her large farm kitchen carried me through the holidays. I reminded myself that it was my choice to spend time in the kitchen preparing food as gifts.  When I attended gatherings where people unpacked their purchased goods to share (some with the store sticker and price still attached) I thought of Chana Mae and how much time, effort and love she put into her gifts of food. 

I wish I could be more like my grandmother this time of year but just having the memories of her gifts of love-filled food is enough…..and as every other year after the holidays I say “I’m never doing all that again!”.

Flash Moments

It’s been two months since I have posted anything here.   I have had several insights that I considered sharing during that time but didn’t take the time to sit down and write.  These ideas or insights come like flashes out of nowhere and if I sit down immediately and write…a blog is created.  However, most of the time when the flash comes I am involved doing other things and rather than stop what I’m doing I’ll make a mental note that I will write about this very good insight later.  I’ve given up trying to figure out where glimpses of insight come from but I know they come as “flashes” while in the present moment.

The problem is that these flashes happen while you’re in the present moment and if they are not written down right away the insight vanishes into the land of past memories.  The space where past memories dwell is not suitable ground for a flash insight because it can get absorbed in concepts and filters that were not there during the initial flash.

 

Unheard Words

My daughter and I were listening to songs to play for her upcoming wedding.  We were listening to several current songs that were remakes by string quartets.  We were listening to songs and thinking of the lyrics wanting the words to be appropriate as well as the music being good.  She played a song for me by one of her favorite local groups played by a string quartet and I really liked the melody.  I asked about the lyrics and she said she didn’t want me to know because they were “messed up” and not good.

We went on to listen to more songs but kept coming back to the same one. What she said next led me to write this blog. “I wish I could hear the music the way you are hearing it. Now that I’ve heard the words I cannot unhear them.” 

I thought about that statement on the way home and realized that the melody was beautiful to me because I didn’t have the words to label it…to conceptualize it…to make a story out of it.  I could only just hear the music.

As humans we need to label everything in our awareness in order to communicate what is perceived by our senses.  But sometimes it may be best to just enjoy the music without the words to tell the story attached to it.  The same could be said for enjoying life……

Gateless = Freedom

It’s been a year today since I completed a “sort of” course called Liberation Unleashed. How I found out about it..I don’t remember exactly…..maybe through a long stream of events that started with Eckhart Tolle’s  “New Earth”.

The whole idea to me revolves around the Zen concept of the Gateless Gate.  It’s based on the notion that we all are looking for a way to find the Gate that will open up the path of peace, happiness with no suffering. We all look for a way to find that Gate and, more importantly, open it. When we finally realize that if there is a Gate at all that it is not locked, has no boundaries and can be freely crossed on either side or passed straight through without the least bit of effort….then we are “enlightened”.

To start the process, you are given a Guide who is a person who has already passed through the Gate so supposedly they will be able to lead you where you need to go. The Guide has only one goal…to help you realize that there is no separate self and never has been.  Sounds simple but believe me, it’s far from it. The questions asked are meant to dissolve the thought that there is a separate little person inside your head running the show…..that there is no separate little person that is separate from all other people or things.  That perceived separate little person is only a conglomerate of your past conditionings, feelings, your life story and exists in memory only.

If this is the first time you have been exposed to such a concept, it can be very unsettling and not accepted.  When something awakens in you and you begin to be interested in this crazy notion, you have started your way to finding the Gateless Gate….which is no Gate at all.

The Gap Between Words

I have been reading Eckhart Tolle’s book New Earth for the 3rd time. The last time I read it was about three years ago, I highlighted almost every line and a subtle shift in perception happened.  This time I downloaded it on my Kindle so I wouldn’t be distracted by all the highlights and here I go again highlighting like crazy.  Maybe I’ll compare the two to see if the same passages were highlight worthy after three years.

Speaking to someone’s soul (using soul for the words Being/Awareness/That, etc) is very tricky and almost impossible to do with words since words and thoughts come from the mind and the soul does not.  Speaking to the soul needs to be transmitted between the words. I can hear the gap between the words of some spiritual teachers and others I cannot.

I’ve always been one to wonder about not only my purpose in life but everyone’s purpose. I’m coming to think that we all share the same purpose and don’t each have our own little individual purposes. What that same purpose is we all share is up for grabs.  It does seem that we all share the same unexplained longing and all attempt satisfaction in as many ways as there are individuals.  If the word longing were to be used instead of the word purpose it might make more sense. Maybe if we all tried to understand God’s language, we could find out.

“Silence is God’s language, everything else is bad translations”  – Eckhart Tolle

New Year – New You…?

I saw a poster on Facebook this week that said “Here we go again with that New Year – New You Bullshit”.  I laughed out loud because every year I look forward to the prospect of creating a new me…or my idea of me.  After all if “I” am an illusion, “I” should be possible to recreate, redesign and manifest things in my life according to my desires just as I would in a dream.

For five years I published a journal/calendar based on the notion that the new moon each month is the best time to recreate and redesign your life. It was like having a new year – new you possibility each month. I always had the same list of desires every month….a few things came about but for the most part the manifesting thing wasn’t working for me.

The illusionary “I” doesn’t change so easily being crusted with long forgotten past conditionings. What has changed is the awareness that “I” am not running the show.

Now it’s time for a new year and since I’m a sucker for new beginnings I’ll make my list of what I want to accomplish this year…..and hope that whoever is running the show is paying attention.