horses in whenuapai

My religion is gone.

The house of worship is inaccessible.


Bare feet on earth is inaccessible.


No one took anything from me.

I ran away from every thing and every one that I have loved. I ran and ran until I could see it all from far away.

And I wept for it's beauty.

And I wept for myself.

And I weep, for I cannot find my way back to them.


Once I thought I was dying. In the middle of the night.

And I promised that if could have another chance that I would be true. I would be true to the one self.

This is a difficult promise.

I think of all of it more than they know. I think of my mom, my dad, my brother. I think of our past, my high school, Synara.
I remember what a pick up truck means and what a homecoming game feels like.
I remember the smell and taste of fresh corn on the cob and hot mosquito nights. I remember the feeling of a lit fire on a January evening.

What I miss most is being surrounded by people who were all shaped by those same things, like it or not, that I was.
I hate it too, the obvious, mono-culture, predictable everything. And, after years of trying to squeeze into that coziness, the inside driver just said "enough" and drove me right out of there.
But that doesn't change the fact that context is paramount. And my context is mid-Michigan.
Damn it.

the dance gets started

Day one of yoga workshop in Melbourne. Pronounced Mel-bun. Sort-of. Anyway.

This feels like the thing I have been working towards learning for the past few years. Dance. I always wanted to get on the mat (so to speak) and just dance. From the heart, and the yoni, with still mind and blissful cells.

Today, I started, clumsily, the process. But that didn't keep me from feeling blissful. Generally, at the end of workshops or classes or meditations or church related or spiritual anything.....the leader/instructor will say.."Now wasn't that just.....or Don't you feel so...fill-in-the-blank" And often I do not and I think either the whole thing is BS and the teacher is spouting nonsense or the students are lying or. OR. Or there is something wrong with me.
But not today. "Yes" I thought, "I do feel blissful and warm and soft."

Which brings me to the knowing I presently find myself sitting with. I work too much. Not too hard, just too much. I recently realized that there is not one morning or afternoon or evening in which I can take a class say, in silks (tissue) which I recently found....or to join the Shaolin group which I felt I should do again when I was in Thailand.
I have no extra regular time.
And for all that I don't feel the payoff is enough. It's not as if I am making partner at a huge firm. It's not even as if I can afford a car, or a basic place to live, if I were to do so on my own.
So, how to right this situation? This I ask my dreaming self, my wise unconscious.
I believe in her. I believe she knows the answer and can impart it to me.

How do I end up with horses and dogs and goats and babies when the time is right? How do I take advantage of the opportunity to study and learn what I came to learn? And can I accept that the answer may not look anything like the image in my head? Felecia, she has always wanted to trust, she has instinctively wanted to believe in what no one else can. And she is fierce in her determination to remain soft and open in a wounded world that cannot help but impart suffering.

Emma says today that we are to feel, not to intellectualize the practice....it comes from the navel, not the head.

Yes.

Isn't that obvious?

:)