Heavy Heart

Quiet.
How deafening it can be at times. Generally, I slip into like a warm blanket. I pull it close and allow it to soothe my heart and mind. Tonight, it's like a wool sweater that is way too tight. It smothers me. It leaves me feeling uncomfortable and out of sorts. I try and fill it with music and meditation but I can still feel its presence.
I have been withdrawing inward for reasons that don't exactly add up to me. I sat in my living room earlier today and cried without provocation. This thirtieth birthday thing is fucking with me. It isnt' about the age/mortality thing...age is of no consequence to me. I'm happy that I've fought, tooth and nail, for my place in this world for the last thirty years. My place. There is the real issue. I'm not entirely okay with where I am and what I'm doing at this point in my life. I've never been one for setting limitations on my possibilities or making ridiculous and needless expectations or goals...I believe that my life will take shape daily and needs room for growth. However, I am human, and I had hoped for a smidge more.
I realize now, that it's all of my own doing. I haven't MADE what I want come to fruition. While I have changed some of the things about my life, like my marriage or my perspective on relationships and others,I still feel anchored to my current life by certain obligations.
I want to travel. My blood is on fire with the need of it. Then, fear rears its ugly head. Where will the money come from? What about my family? Friends? My dogs? My bills? The anchor hasn't budged in years and my soul is shackled to it.

I am seeing someone new, that is fantastic. We are indeed kindred spirits...and I am terrified of this. I worry that I will fuck it up. I worry that he will see me, all of me, and run screaming in the opposite direction. I worry about caring too much and appearing foolish. There seems to be something terribly interesting about me...for a little while. Years pass, and I'm left behind like so many childish things, a little more used up and cynical. Things have moved so slowly, like a tiny insect caught in honey. I start to feel things, and I pull back and hide. I am so scarred....and while I have found a path to peace through meditation and confession (in the form of blogging), I still have days, like this one, where I need to be alone and just sort out the bullshit that accumulates in my psyche. Can someone really understand this need without feeling slighted?
So. I sit, in the quiet and let it force my thoughts to come to the forefront. I hope that I am enough....that I will continue to grow and heal. I hope that I will be forgiven for days like this and that someday that I will not feel that forgiveness is necessary.

The Raptors?

SO
Here I am on yet another "eve of destruction" (remember Y2K anyone?) with one more on the way according to John Cusack, and I can't help but chortle about the willingness of so many cults (and this is most assuredly a cult) to die (or be raptured whatever the heck that implies). I suppose I would be too if my religion bound me so tightly that I really wasn't living at all. Sacrifice is at the root of all religion and I can get on board with that. I've never received anything in this life that I haven't worked for, so of course I would carry that same mentality into working towards my afterlife. You can't make something from nothing (unless you are a Creationist, in which case we were all finger snapped into existence!) and in most instances in order to excel in one area, you have to give, or sacrifice another. We are finite in our ability to focus. Well. Except for Stephen Hawking, and really, what else is he going to do besides focus? (BAZINGA!)
What I take issue with is all the finger pointing and condemnation that always surfaces with every end of the world scenario. With todays rapture, brought to you by the "prophet", Harold Camping, he states that anyone can go to heaven regardless of religion only to go back and say "as long as you believe in the ENTIRE Bible and the teachings of Jesus Christ." Basically negating his previous statement and replacing it with if you aren't Christian, your ass is going to hell. Period. This loving God that I've heard so much about in the last 29 years, is going to have an exclusive VIP party and give the middle finger to the majority of the planet? I'm sorry, but that's a jerk move and the God that I believe in, the one that has it's (because this being transcends gender!) hand in every religion, whose primary purpose is to inspire love and hope is shaking it's head.
I have an excerpt from a favorite book of mine that I just had to share that I think blends nicely with where I'm going with this blog post.

"Religious rituals often develop out mystical experimentation. Some brave scout goes looking for a new path to the divine, has a transcendent experience and returns home a prophet. He or she brings back to the community tales of heaven and maps of how to get there. Then others repeat the words, the works, the prayers, or the acts of this prophet, in order to cross over, too. Sometimes this is successful--sometimes the same familiar combination of syllables and devotional practices repeated generation after generation might carry many people to the other side. Sometimes it doesn't work, though. Inevitably even the most original new ideas will eventually harden into dogma or stop working for everybody...Be very careful not to get too obessessed with the repetition of religious ritual just for it's own sake. ESPECIALLY in this divided world, where the Taliban and the Christain Coalition continue to fight out their international trademark war over who owns the rights to the word God, it may be useful to remember that it is not the tying of the cat to the pole that has ever brought anyone into transcendence, but only the constant desire of an individual seek to experience the eternal compassion of the divine. Flexibility is just as essential for divinity as it is for discipline.

Basically, it's about the search for God and the desire to be more like this being that should motivate us, not the honor of saying "I told you so" to any other religious sect. God doesn't want us to hate one another, or exclude each other from partaking of divine love. The end game for this being is love. It's not about how many feet you wash on Sunday, or how many wafers you eat, or how many snakes you handle, or how many visions you receive, it's about the the quest to be more like God. It's about kindness and love.

I think, on this the eve of my third imminent judgement, I will just continue to be myself who strives to be kind everyday, who loves with an open heart and mind that meditates and feels closer to God than I have at any other point in my life who has no agenda to try and spread any idea except one of love and tolerance.

" The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in anyway whatsoever that mortals choose to worship-just so long as those prayers are sincere. As one line from the Upanishads suggests " People follow different paths, straight or crooked, according to their temperament, depending on which they consider best, or most appropriate-and all reach You (God), just as rivers enter the ocean.

Another Sunday Night

Where is my mind? Another late night (or at least it seems late on my new up with the chickens asses at dinner time sleep schedule) and sleep is elusive.
Empathy and I have a love hate relationship.
On the dark days, I feel too much, I feel it all the pain, the disappointment, the confusion of my dear ones. With my heart, large and strong, I take it because I love them all, more than I love my own peace of mind. I am the martyr once more. Take me, cold and dark night, and spare those that have taken up residency in the warm folds of my heart. I go willingly, and with a mind clear and ready to accept the worst that they have to offer.
These lips will never betray the heartsick thoughts you have whispered sacredly into my ears.
I meditate, deep and true, to heal the wounds I have willingly allowed to be inflicted on my own psyche. I am the shaman of my heart, and I will heal it with all of the love and kindness being offered up by others who slip into the stream of semi consciousness that is the meditative mind. I am surrounded by light and feel love pour into me, rebuilding me so that I might once again pass what I find onto you.

Not all days are dark...there are days that all of those that I cherish shine and lift me up. Today, however, was not that day. The sky and the hearts who live under it were a mirror. I held out a light for those who wandered, and watched it flicker but never sputter, beckoning for them to come forward and share their burdens.
I will man the coals of loves light, keeping them warm and bright so that they might offer up their protection for any that may wander close. Come close, aching heart, for my flames were meant to warm you, mind, body, and soul. I am familiar with your path. Give me purpose. Touch my heart, the war torn mess that it is and marvel at its tenacity. It beats still, steady and strong in spite of scars from wounds that should have been fatal. Draw from it a hope that the days will not always be dark, that light is waiting to burst through and that someone loved you enough to listen.

I spy with my little eyes...

Life is funny in the way that it doesn't give two shits about our "plans". As a matter of fact, it seems as if life takes great pleasure in completely tearing asunder any plans that we make to maintain it. Maintain...helluva word. Not one I'm particularly attached to seeing as how it implies control and limitation. I'm beginning, for the first time in a long time, to see that living a maintained, planned life, is just a futile attempt to create structure in a world that is built around and FOR chaos. I think many of us have adopted this mentality that the world is "manageable". How could we ever be so daft? Shakespeare said it best, all the world is a stage and we are merely actors...who don't have access to the rewrites that our great playwright decides.

I'm tossing aside (or at least, TRYING) the human tendency to compartmentalize my life. I am working on not labeling each of you, and placing you neatly into your assigned space. You stand so much taller when you are simply yourself, a solo entity, and not lumped in with a group, genre, color coded and neatly pressed.
I'm finding that I can enjoy myself more when I'm not always trying to decide if each choice I make will echo throughout my entire life. I'm living for right now, for the moments of happiness that I can find, for the people that I can hold and whisper my story to at this moment, the only one I'm certain of. I am not CARELESS, but I am more conscious of how important taking each opportunity for happiness is.

I hope for a future, but I don't feel that it is inevitable like I once did, that the universe OWED me that opportunity. I take each day, as corny as it may seem, as a gift. I am thankful for this life I have, and for my mind opening just enough to really appreciate the beauty, love, experience, joy, and contentment that even a simple Wednesday can offer.





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Now playing: Alison Krauss - It Doesn't Matter
via FoxyTunes