Category: ARTicles

What’s a day?

What we call the sunrise; new beginning. The high noon and afternoon: sustaining preserving life. What we call the  sunset; ending. The night sky; magical.

It happens everyday.

What it teaches me:

• Birth
• Life- ongoing with no meaning but what’s given. There’s always the sun, sometimes the sky is blue, sometimes it’s not, sometimes clouds, sometimes weather.
• Death

Birth and death are opposites, not life and death. Life is Life. Love is Love and what we make of it, is our own dream, our own movie.  And as opposites, birth is death to something, death is birth to something. All the fuss in between.

 

A magical story

I have been saying lately that my intention… is to be intentional! And today I chose to create creating! A ridiculous kind of funny…

As you read this story you’ll see how perfect the prior sentence is.

I must start by saying my obsession with bears has peaked. In my heart I feel their sweet energy. I often see juvenile bears where I live. I believe this age to be equivalent to an 8 year old human. Not too long ago I dreamt of one walking by me in the front of my building. As it passed I thought, I really want to finally hug it. It turned around encircled me, stood up and hugged me. We kinda played pawsies then it got down and left. Amazing.

Ananda Ashram has been live in the mornings for fire ceremony, which I love and miss! After meditating we end in a chant for healing. We repeat maha-mrtyunjaya mantra. Or Tryambakam. Called the death conquering mantra. While chanting it, if there is anyone needing healing we envision them. This morning at the end of visualizing I saw a bear in my minds eye and then zoo animals. I opened my eyes and a bear was outside my window looking in. Then went on its way. I was covered in goosebumps. Total BEAR Shaktipat. I was soo excited and Bean also picked up on the energy. I jumped up and down and watched it. Magic! This is the same bear that passed by today:

 

In this profound time

• like sadguru (Isha in an interview with Brian Rose) said, just stay alive. i like that as I don’t want to miss this time
• have a physical and spiritual hygiene practice- if you need help with this one contact me- it’s my wheelhouse
• live intentionally and authentically
• consider impact of words and thoughts
• consider impact relating to animals, all of nature and planet
• express self like never before
• talk a stand, so you stop falling for just anything
• even as things let up, don’t let up on the above

 

I’m choosing to share these observations. Uniting with inner guidance vs being out there~

For quite sometime now, the conversation with many has been around fear. How to face our own, truly preparing for this time. It’s undeniable that we have been given the opportunity to face fears now. I’ve been asking the question lately and earnestly, “Why are we in fear?” “Why has it always been this way?” We can say it’s being afraid of losing our life here, and we do anything to avoid that discomfort.

I am seeing fear as a huge webbing, and thankfully it is unstable and it contains within it the matrix of the duality. I firmly believe that we are being given the chance of our lifetimes. We are being asked to stabilize.. And what occurs to me is that the common commitment is being love and not fear.

I have been a super vigilant person since I was born, and that too is collapsing. Unity was only an intellectual idea- until now. For me anyway. It is landing . Our vibration remains the most important aspect of our life. And it is THE CHOICE. As I’ve been choosing anything other than fear lately I’m getting it. A unified field. A unified front is our birth rite. And as a super vigilant person, entrained to respond to things with urgency, this time period is an enormous time- out. So another collapsing. Urgency is yet another form of fear.

And collectively we are being given a chill pill. That too is a great immunization. Stabilizing ourselves again. What I mean by this is all the fragments of ourselves are being pulled together into 2020 focus. It is our rite to experience oneness. All the duality dissolving.

This duality has been perpetuated by thinking we had to choose. We haven’t understood that our vibration is where choices manifest. So we chose this not that, and it all kept a perpetual motion of fragmenting. Endlessly figuring it out. What a game. And it’s coming to an end.

And realizing now that we offer our vibration at all times. Not reliant on anyone telling us what’s what, but deciding for ourselves.

And as a temple in an Ashram is closed at times to clear and recharge, so will our world.  Resistance will drop and perhaps stillness will be the slow drip.

to everyone’s self mastery. HO!

Completing with the blame cycle

Held hostage by a man

Since the Women’s March, and the dream of my mother, a memory came into focus. One that I rarely if ever spoke about it. I was 18, and traveling in Brazil by myself, on a multi city ticket. I had flown from Rio to Fortaleza, where I didn’t know anyone. I went to a market, and while walking around, I met a man with his 3 daughters. He invited me to stay with them at their house on the beach. A day into it, after the girls and I had had some beach time, he started acting very bizarre. He said he needed to go out, and would be back in a few hours. I wanted to go to the beach, but every door was locked! We were locked in. Fuck. How creepy. Encouraged by his housekeeper who knew where his keys were to the garage and his dune buggy, she sent the three girls and I off to the mercado. Flying over the sand dunes in his dune buggy on one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, Morro Branco, the feeling I had was of awe and beauty, as well as kinda terrifying.

At the market I met the pilot of the flight I had taken to Fortaleza. He invited me to hang with him, have some lunch, then take a flight to Recife. On the flight I sat in the cockpit with him. He and I became good friends. Once back in Rio, I traveled a bit with his wife and 2 little boys.

Held hostage again

This time I was 20. Without shame I can write about this topic, as many sisters have gone through the same. I had agreed to go on a date with a guy, whom I was basically pretty lukewarm about. He didn’t attend the University I went to, but played in the band at a party my roommates and I had at the end of the school year, and had hounded me to go out with him. We went to see the movie, Flashdance. Afterwards, he invited me to his place encouraging me to sing with him. So I went. We sat down at the piano, blah blah blah, blah blah blah.. A lot of hot air. But when he got up and went and locked the front door, then started to approach me, I knew instantly I had little time. I started to speak up, being very strong mentally,  about this being the only way he could have his way with me. The psychology worked briefly, but his brute strength won out. Date raped. A term I didn’t know until two weeks later, when Time or Newsweek had cover story about it.

All I knew was that I had no idea where I was. I felt i had to accept a ride home from him. Was completely unable to speak. Confusion setting in. Not knowing what to say or do. I treated him kindly on the drive, and listened to him tell me he wanted to see me again. UGGGGGH.

No voice. To make matters worse, on some level I began excusing him. It was ingrained so deeply. That was the worst of it. Much worse than the incident itself was not being able to hold this guy accountable. Inside of myself even. Who was wrong? Did I turn on my self? Is that a female thing?

I met Jonathan Kaplan in my late 20’s, as he directed quite a few music videos for John Mellencamp. He was the director of the movie Accused, with Jodie Foster. Who doesn’t remember that movie. I told him how much I appreciated that he made it. That he chose to tell a very difficult story. That endlessly this issue would twist the scenario and the woman would be to blame. My perpetrator wasn’t a good old boy, though. He was as disenfranchised as I was, just differently. It was a real mind fuck. If I had reported him, given the color of his skin, he likely would have been toast.

Depends on how you look at it

The last video shoot I did with the band that Jonathan Kaplan directed, had me in the back seat of a limo…as an older woman. Ha! I was all of 29, with two young high school boys fawning all over me. I think I was eventually down to my bra, and decked in diamonds. These boys were in heaven. Aka Ava Gardner, with her boy toys, from Night of the Iguana.

Jonathan wasn’t crazy about this scene. It actually was cut by MTV. Too much they said. This was before Madonna’s Truth or Dare, which changed things for MTV. He and I spoke after the scene. He said that I deserved better than that. What a great guy. It might have even been his suggestion that I get paid for it. Mellencamp was way into that particular scene and wanted me to play it, as my husband and I were splitting up. He said I had the power in the scene. That’s how he thought.

I did feel somewhat degraded. But I shook it off, as it was an acting roll. It was a character. I took the money from the shoot and went directly to buy my airline ticket to NYC. I was going to check out acting schools.

We no longer need permission from Daddy… Gloria Steinem

Or anyone for that matter. I feel like I was conditioned to excuse men. By writing that, I’m not saying it was wrong to do that. It was the way it was for my particular lineage at that time. I’m not making myself wrong. No, I’ve done quite enough of that.  These stories are a way of connecting some dots. Period.

Acting school saved me, putting me in touch with my spirit. It gave me a creative outlet that I desperately needed.

Here it is 2017. I write, because it’s time for some transparency. Maybe it is helpful for someone else.

I spoke to a girlfriend today who said, maybe the time really is now. To completely come out of hiding as powerful women,  as powerful people who express themselves. Total decency.

A boundary is a beautiful act in architecture. It is self loves journey. Although it can be a difficult process at first- it’s the inroad to the outroad. Without them life is chaotic and confusing.